Equal parts intrigue and scepticism had already dogged the forthcoming adaptation of Wuthering Heights from Emerald Fennell – whose first two films, Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, displayed a love of mordant and explicit envelope-pushing.
As reported by World of Reel, a first test screening for the film, which stars Margot Robbie and Saltburn’s Jacob Elordi, took place earlier this week in Dallas, and audience reaction was “mixed”.
One attender described the film as “aggressively provocative and tonally abrasive” and suggested it strongly recalled the “stylised depravity” of Saltburn with scenes of “clinical masturbation”, a bondage-tinged sexual encounter involving horse reins and less conventional romance or emotional complexity than many aficionados of Emily Brontë’s novel might expect.
The film reportedly opens with a public hanging in which the “condemned man ejaculates mid-execution”. The crowd react orgiastically, and a nun “fondles the corpse’s visible erection”.
Other signature Fennell shots include lingering takes of “suggestive textures” such as egg yolks, bread dough and slug trails.
Test screenings offer production companies an early opportunity to gauge mainstream reactions to forthcoming releases. Studios show unfinished versions of films to the public, who usually promise confidentiality.
The majority of final versions of movies differ from versions trialled in this way, with the endings of films a particularly common alteration. Films whose conclusions were changed following audience feedback include Titanic, 28 Days Later, Blade Runner, Pretty Woman and Sunset Boulevard.
Earlier this year the film’s casting director, Kharmel Cochrane, defended her choices after many suggested Robbie was too old to play the role of Catherine Earnshaw, as well as questioning Elordi’s ethnicity, since Heathcliff, the foundling with whom she falls in love, is generally perceived to have a Romany or Gypsy background.
Most big and small screen adaptations of the novel have ignored this, with the character having been played by actors including Ralph Fiennes, Tom Hardy and Timothy Dalton. Andrea Arnold’s 2011 adaptation cast a mixed race actor, James Howson, in the role.
Speaking at the Sands film festival in Scotland, Cochrane said there was “no need to be accurate” as the source material is “just a book”.
She continued: “There’s definitely going to be some English Lit fans that are not going to be happy. Wait until you see the set design, because that is even more shocking. And there may or may not be a dog collar in it.”
The film, which is scheduled for release on Valentine’s Day 2026, will be Robbie’s first major role since Barbie and Fennell’s first film since Saltburn became an audience sensation in 2023, although it underperformed with awards bodies.
World of Reel quotes another attender of the Dallas screening as saying that despite strong leading performances, Fennell’s take on their characters is sufficiently “cold and unlikable” that engagement with their fates is made difficult.
