Why is the film Wuthering Heights controversial?

Director Emerald Fennell’s 2026 film adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights, which was published in 1847, has been called controversial because of its anachronistic elements and casting. Unlike the book, which has virtually no depictions of sexuality, the film contains scenes showing masturbation and sadomasochism. The movie’s costuming also strays from the time period in which the novel is set (at the turn of the 19th century in Yorkshire, England), and the soundtrack is supplied by British electro-pop star Charli XCX.

Critics have also taken issue with the casting of blonde Australian actress Margot Robbie (who was 35 when the film was released) as Catherine Earnshaw. In the novel the character is described as having brown hair and dies in childbirth when she is about 18 years old. Meanwhile, Heathcliff, a foundling who is described as dark-skinned and possibly of Roma origin, is played by a white Australian actor, Jacob Elordi. (However, scholars have theorized that Heathcliff could be an Irish refugee of the Great Famine; others have suggested he is of Black African descent who was enslaved.)

Addressing the discrepancies between the book and the film, Fennell told interviewers, “What I can say is I’m making a version of it. There’s a version that I remembered reading that isn’t quite real. And there’s a version where I wanted stuff to happen that never happened. And so it is Wuthering Heights, and it isn’t.”