Emerald Fennell to direct ‘Wuthering Heights’ adaptation

Preview:

• Emerald Fennell has teased that she will adapt ‘Wuthering Heights’.
• It will be based on the novel by Emily Brontë.
• No casting has been announced yet.

Given that her first two movie projects – one winning an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay –– the stories she wrote and directed herself, it’s almost surprising to learn that Emerald Fennell has her eye on an adaptation.

And not just any source material, but Emily Brontë’s gothic classic ‘Wuthering Heights’, which has appeared on screen various times in the past. Still, it seems that’s no barrier to a new take, especially from the filmmaker behind ‘Promising Young Women’ and ‘Saltburn’.

Fennell teased his new project with a social media post:

pic.twitter.com/NZXNYAm1wZ

— Emerald Fennell (@emeraldfennell) July 12, 2024

Of course, a tweet is one thing; What the actual project will involve is another matter, but what Fennell chooses to do will certainly be expected.

Fennell has written earlier About how gothic themes influenced her — and played out in a Los Angeles Times column in ‘Saltburn’:

“I’ve always been obsessed with the Gothic. Whether it’s Edward Gorey’s children who are variously suffocated by peaches, sucked dry by leeches or ground up by rugs; Whether it’s Du Maurier’s unruly heroines or the unruly erotic power of Angela Carter’s fairy tales, the Gothic world has always held me in its grip. It’s a genre where comedy and horror, rebellion and desire, sex and death are forever linked, where every exchange is heavy with the threat of violence, or sex, or both.”

So, ‘Wuthering Heights’ definitely makes sense for him.

What is the story of ‘Wuthering Heights’?

Brontë’s book, published in 1847 under the pseudonym Alice Bell, follows Heathcliff, an orphan-turned-foster-son who falls in love with the daughter of the family who owns the estate on which he now lives, Wuthering Heights.

After escaping, Heathcliff rises from the ranks of the gentry and takes revenge on the families – the Earnshaws and the Lintons – who kept him away from his true love, Cathy Linton.

“I am torn with desire.. haunted by hate!”

What are the previous adaptations of ‘Wuthering Heights’?

There have been various adaptations of the book in the past, including William Wyler’s 1939 film starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon; Robert Faust’s 1970 movie with Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall; Peter Kosminski’s 1992 film directed by Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche and Andrea Arnold’s 2012 effort, starring James Howson and Kaya Scodelario.

“A passion. An obsession. A love that destroyed everyone it touched.”

On the small screen, there were TV miniseries in 2009 starring Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley, and series in 1978 and 1998.

And don’t forget Kate Bush’s 1978 song “Wuthering Heights.”

When will Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ hit the screens?

All we know about the project at this point is that Fennell intends to make it (or at least something based on it), with zero details to offer on a release date, as it doesn’t yet have a studio or streaming home. .