The news that Saltburn director Emerald Fennell‘s adaptation of Wuthering Heights is set to hit our screens on Valentine’s Day 2026 has disgruntled many die-hard Brontë fanatics, or seemingly anyone who values the preservation of classic literature.
The film stars Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie as the demonic protagonists, entangled in a romantic display of sadism; a glimpse of this came in the teaser trailer released in September, where it was revealed that pop icon Charli xcx was also helming the soundtrack. ‘Everything is romantic’ from Brat, her album that revolutionised the pop culture landscape, narrates the supercut.
Social media exploded with backlash, and a huge opprobrium was directed to Miss xcx’s involvement with the production, with literary fanatics on TikTok reacting and a tweet by the user chappellbrina, going viral describing Charli’s participation as the “matcha dubai chocolate labubu of film”, classifying xcx’s work as tacky.
This viral tweet symbolises fans’ pre-emptive claims that Charli’s involvement misses the mark. Her significant impact on electronic music and dance-pop only illuminates the disparity between this genre and Emily Brontë’s masterpiece. The kaleidoscopic set design also encroaches on Brontë’s elegantly bleak and wild vision of the Yorkshire moors; the trailer reveals gaudy salons and bedrooms, gold-encrusted four-poster beds, Barbie-pink sofas, with wall features dripping with questionable-looking pearls.
It isn’t just the soundtrack that’s already polarising audiences, but the overarching, salacious sexuality of the film. The trailer teases Margot Robbie as embodying Cathy’s sexual fantasies, scenes of dripping egg yolks, and bread kneading. These salacious scenes had a mixed reception at a test screening, with the film dubbed “aggressively provocative and tonally abrasive.” This repulsion mimics that of 1847, when the novel was first published. Readers recoiled at the vulgarity of Brontë’s writing, a review from the period reads, “How a human being could have attempted such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen chapters, is a mystery. It is a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors…”.
Having garnered similar apprehensions about the film, the cyclical critique lends a sense of authenticity to the adaptation, with both Brontë and Fennell initially reviled for their experimentation with crude and indecent narratives, with sections of both Victorian and modern audiences appalled by their work. Despite criticism, Wuthering Heights, at 178 years old, is one of the most respected pieces of literature of all time, vividly evoking persistent questions of self-corruption and the supernatural. Time will tell whether Emerald Fennell will get it right, or viewers will flock to ‘X’ mortified, yet again.
However, Charli XCX recently dropped two new songs: ‘House’ and ‘Chains of Love’, featured on her upcoming album ‘Wuthering Heights’. These releases feel much more in keeping with the gothic, perturbing nature of Victorian England. John Cale of The Velvet Underground contributes a cutting and grave monologue to ‘House’; Charli could not get further away from Brat with this feature. Cale’s ominous and categorically creepy delivery complements the relentless Hitchcock-like violin that builds a sense of impending doom. As for Chains of Love, it leans even closer into Emily Brontë’s imagined world, the lyricism directly referencing Catherine and Heathcliff’s tortured relationship and status as prisoners to each other. In both of the songs, Charli’s vocals cut deeper than a lot of Brat; they feel richer and more yearning. A lot of ‘Brat’s more electronic and upbeat songs were monosyllabic and filler-word heavy. Perhaps after these releases, social media will be more welcoming to her involvement in the film’s production; it seems she has really got this album right so far, a true ode to ‘Wuthering Heights’.
