DISCLAIMER – this article features sexual language and information relating to the plot of “Wuthering Heights”.
“Wuthering Heights” is the most talked-about film of the moment, with Emerald Fennell’s polarising new adaptation already becoming a box-office hit.
The 2026 release is inspired by Emily Brontë’s 1847 gothic romance novel, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as tragic lovers, Cathy and Heathcliff.
And from its “primal” and “sexual” focus, to the “Wuthering Heights” corset fashion revival, the long-awaited release, written and directed by Fennell, is all anyone has been talking about.
It is a particularly controversial scene from the new adaptation that made headlines this week, with Fennell’s interpretation featuring themes of sadomasochism.
One scene in question sees Heathcliff [Jacob Elordi] and Isabella [Alison Oliver] engage in BDSM, with Isabella seen wearing a dog collar and sitting on all fours, acting like a dog during a role play.
And while its inclusion has proven divisive with viewers, both Elordi and Oliver have defended the scene, reflecting on the importance of the moment to the plot.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
“That was so much fun, that scene,” Elordi explained to Entertainment Weekly. “I think that was Emerald kind of taking the killing of the dog and these really dark parts of the novel and putting them into this scene.
“I had so much fun because it’s at that point that Isabella and Heathcliff are completely off the deep end,” he continued. “They’re living in a kind of hell, you know?”
“It’s the moment that his obsession clicks over into something else – into a rabid desperation – and he loses any semblance of composure. It’s a nice point for the character, I think.”
(Image credit: Getty Images)
“I remember [Fennell] saying something really interesting about like, ‘Because [Isabella is] actually quite a repressed person, and because she’s been so infantilised, anything that is repressed, when it comes out, it’s messy and unorganised,'” added Oliver.
“And she’s in a very unknown, strange, different place. A lot of that was just playing out the mess of the new place that she’s in.”
“There’s an enormous amount of sadomasochism in this book,” Fennell explained at the 2025 Brontë Women’s Writing festival, while defending her adaptation. “There’s a reason people were deeply shocked by it.”
“No one is [going to be] in agreement about any element of it”, she later added of her 2026 adaptation. “I can’t make something for everyone.”
“Wuthering Heights” is available to watch now in UK cinemas.