The 2026 “Wuthering Heights” film starring “Barbie” actress Margot Robbie and “Frankenstein” star Jacob Elordi takes a major departure from the 1847 novel by Emily Brontë. There have been numerous variations over time, however this model, written and directed by Emerald Fennell, of “Saltburn” fame, ends in another way from the e-book on which it’s primarily based.
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Margot Robbie and Jacob Elrodi Star In 2026’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ Adaptation
“Wuthering Heights” is a fancy Gothic story that focuses on themes of obsessive love and revenge. The story focuses on the obsessive love affair between Catherine “Cathy” Earnshaw (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi). They’re kids when Cathy’s father takes in Heathcliff as a mysterious orphan. The 2 develop up collectively and develop deep emotions for each other.
Nonetheless, Cathy decides to marry her rich neighbor, Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), which prompts Heathcliff to depart. He later returns a rich man and marries Edgar’s sister, Isabella Linton. That stated, despite the fact that they’re each married, their romantic emotions for one another don’t diminish.
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How Does The Margot Robbie Model Finish?
Many followers know that Cathy truly dies about midway by way of the e-book, and Heathcliff finally drives himself mad. Within the e-book, Heathcliff visits a pregnant Catherine in secret, and she or he dies shortly after giving delivery to a daughter, Cathy.
Within the film, Cathy’s housekeeper, Nelly, performs a extra villainous function. Cathy tells Nelly that she has had a miscarriage, however Nelly thinks she is mendacity for consideration. Nelly has additionally been burning Heathcliff’s letters to Cathy to maintain them aside. Nonetheless, as soon as Nelly realizes Cathy is dying, she tells Heathcliff. Sadly, it’s too late, and Cathy dies from sepsis from the miscarriage earlier than he arrives.
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How The ‘Wuthering Heights’ Ending Modified
Within the e-book, Cathy has a daughter, however within the film, she suffers a miscarriage. That is just one change from the supply materials. The opposite change is that Heathcliff visits Cathy earlier than she dies; nevertheless, within the film, that doesn’t occur. She speaks to him in a dream-state, however they don’t truly meet in individual earlier than she dies. Fennell defined that the choice to maintain Heathcliff and Cathy aside on the finish is “partly structural.”
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“There are about three totally different conferences and three totally different speeches, and so a part of it was consolidating that,” she stated whereas talking to Entertainment Weekly. “But additionally, we discuss lots about ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and, clearly, after we meet Isabella, she’s speaking about that form of story and about that missed factor, and I really feel a lot that Cathy and Heathcliff’s [romance] was about lacking one another.”
She went on to say, “And so what I did was I introduced loads of the love ahead, and loads of these actually essential conversations ahead, to present them a while in order that it did not simply occur on the finish.”
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Why The 2026 Adaptation Ends With Cathy’s Loss of life
As an alternative of following the story of their kids, the film ends fairly shortly after Cathy passes away. Her return as a ghost, featured in a number of different variations, doesn’t happen right here.
“It begins the place it ends and ends the place it begins,” Fennell stated of her chosen ending. “And that is the factor about love, and it is the factor in regards to the e-book, proper? It is that it is ceaselessly and it is cyclical, and so there is no cease — even when there is a horrible, unhappy, tragic cease, it is probably not a cease — as a result of that is what the e-book feels a lot about.”
She provides, “It is in regards to the depths of human feeling and the way it exists in a profound method, not only a bodily one. And in order that, I do not know, that felt like the best approach to finish it for me.”
Emerald Fennell Defends Her Adjustments To ‘Wuthering Heights’
Elsewhere in her dialog with Leisure Weekly, Fennell revealed that she had first fallen in love with the e-book as an adolescent. Whereas creating the script, she recalled occasions that had truly occurred within the e-book and others that didn’t. This led her to form the narrative by eliminating some characters and altering others.
“It was humorous, you realize, I feel the issues that I remembered have been each actual and never actual,” she defined. “So there was a specific amount of want success in there, and there have been complete characters that I would type of forgotten or consolidated.”
As an alternative of instantly adapting the e-book, Fennell defined that she “needed to make one thing that was my response and interpretation to that e-book and to the sensation of it.”
