FRIDAY FILM / PEEK AT MARGOT ROBBIE'S WUTHERING HEIGHTS WITH A BIT OF ADVANCE SPICE FROM DIRECTOR EMERALD FENNELL

Here’s a quick preview of the upcoming Wuthering Heights film starring Margot Robbie.  The new version is directed by Emerald Fennell and box offices open February 13-14, 2026 — a Valentine’s Day weekend release aimed at audiences seeking a passionate and dramatic interpretation of Emily Brontë’s 1847 classic. 

Top Cast 

• Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw

• Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff 

• Hong Chau as Nelly Dean 

• Shazad Latif as Edgar Linton 

• Alison Oliver as Isabella Linton 

• Martin Clunes as Mr. Earnshaw 

• Ewan Mitchell as Hindley Earnshaw 

* Young versions of Cathy and Heathcliff are played by Charlotte Mellington and Owen Cooper, respectively.

Director and Creative Team Emerald Fennell, LEFT, acclaimed for Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, wrote and directed this adaptation. Robbie is also producing through her LuckyChap Entertainment. 

Filming Location Principal photography took place in the United Kingdom, with extensive location shooting in the Yorkshire Dales (including Arkengarthdale and Swaledale) to capture the moody moorland setting integral to Brontë’s story. 

Additional work was at Sky Studios Elstree. Wikipedia 

Is There Pre-Debut Controversy? Yes. The film has become a polarizing topic online even before its release: 

• Some criticize the casting choices, particularly Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, because the novel implies Heathcliff’s outsider, non-white background while Elordi is fair-skinned, and because Robbie, in her 30s, plays a character who’s a teenager in the book.  

• There’s debate over the film’s stylistic direction and marketing, including its steamy trailers and visuals that some say stray from traditional interpretations of the gothic romance. 

• Some early viewers have expressed frustration over perceived whitewashing and historical detail choices (like costume or music). Robbie and Fennell have both publicly acknowledged the conversations and urged audiences to wait for the full film before making final judgments. 

 One more note: Wuthering Heights is firmly in the public domain, which means no single era, critic, or constituency owns a definitive interpretation. Public-domain status exists precisely to give artists the freedom to revisit, reframe, and even challenge the original work without permission or constraint. 

Each adaptation becomes a conversation with Emily Brontë rather than a museum piece under glass. Some interpretations will resonate, others will provoke disagreement, but that tension is the engine of cultural longevity. 

The fact that Wuthering Heights continues to invite reinvention nearly two centuries later is not a failure of fidelity—it is proof of the novel’s enduring power. 

For those generationally challenged (ignorance) here's a big of informity: Wuthering is a dialect word from northern England, particularly Yorkshire, and it means to bluster, roar, or howl violently, most often in reference to wind and weather. In Bronte's Wuthering Heights, the word captures more than climate. It describes a place perpetually battered by harsh winds on exposed moorland, but it also functions symbolically. “Wuthering” suggests turbulence, unrest, and emotional violence—the same qualities that define the novel’s characters and their relationships. 

The house itself seems shaped by the wind, just as the people inside are shaped by obsession, pride, and unresolved passion. Emily Brontë chose the term deliberately. It signals from the title onward that this is not a gentle pastoral romance, but a story driven by elemental forces—natural and human—that refuse to be calmed. 

ENCORE.

Adding the 2026 adaptation by director Fennell brings the redux tally up another notch, Other notable film adaptations of Wuthering Heights include: * Wuthering Heights (1920 silent film) • Wuthering Heights (1939) starring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier • Abismos de Pasión (1954, Spanish-language version) • Wuthering Heights (1970) starring Timothy Dalton • Hurlevent (1985, French) • Onimaru (Arashi ga oka) (1988, Japanese) • Hihintayin Kita sa Langit (1991, Filipino) • Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1992) starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche • The Promise (2007, Filipino) • Wuthering Heights (2011) directed by Andrea Arnold • Wuthering Heights (2022) directed by Bryan Ferriter  

AMERICANA / THE UN-AMERICAN PRESIDENT

The new America on January 24, 2026

GUEST BLOG / By Maureen Dowd, Opinion Columnist, New York Times reporting from Washington DC--I saw the charismatic Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda lead the National Symphony Orchestra on Thursday, in a program called “Songs of Destiny & Fate.” The Brahms, Bach and Vivaldi were a soothing tonic to President Trump’s soundtrack, which is akin to the stabbing, shrieking Bernard Herrmann score for Hitchcock’s “Psycho” shower scene. 

The concert began with “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Even before Trump blasphemously interloped onto the Kennedy Center’s name, Horrible Trump Culture War Enforcer Ric Grenell had dictated that all National Symphony Orchestra concerts begin with the national anthem. 

I’m always happy to put my hand on my heart and listen to the ode to our flag and this “heav’n rescued land.” My father always had an American flag flying and took it down at sundown as a sign of respect, which was the custom then. When I won a Pulitzer, New York’s very cool senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, sent me a flag that had flown over the Capitol, which I cherish. 

 But it felt tinny to be force-fed “The Star-Spangled Banner” by our solipsistic president and his creepy sycophants, who show nothing but disdain for the Constitution and American values. It was our country’s destiny to reflect ideals that made us an incandescent beacon for democracy. 

But Trump has pulverized those ideals. We are now seen as sinister, selfish, unruly and at everybody’s throat. 

Jack Smith’s testimony before Congress on Thursday was a stinging reminder that Trump tried to overthrow the government and wickedly put lawmakers and his own vice president in harm’s way. “Our investigation revealed that Donald Trump is the person who caused Jan. 6, that it was foreseeable to him and that he sought to exploit the violence,” Smith said. 

It is heartbreaking that on the cusp of our 250th anniversary, we have a president who is perverting all the values our country was founded on — looking out for one another, respecting one another’s rights. America is not supposed to be a place where an angel-faced 5-year-old named Liam, with a floppy-eared hat and a Spider-Man backpack, gets seized and taken to a detention center by men in masks. 

 The American leader is meant to be a unifier, a strong and soothing presence in the world. Trump is an anarchic toddler, constantly causing upheaval across the globe, transgressing and remaking everything in his helter-skelter image. He has no interest in fireside chats; he wants to set fires. He’s more about droit du seigneur than noblesse oblige. He feels entitled to whatever he wants, from Greenland to Canada to the Kennedy Center to a Nobel Prize he didn’t win. 

Unlike previous presidents, he isn’t countering Russia; he’s catering to it. He disparaged the NATO troops who died for us in Afghanistan and belittled our nicest neighbor, claiming that “Canada lives because of the United States.” 

Demanding Greenland, which he kept calling Iceland, he whinged to global leaders at Davos: “All I want is a piece of ice.” The depth of his shallowness is infinite. One Canadian columnist asked: “How would Trump behave differently if he was legitimately losing his mind?” 

I understand the importance of legal immigration. My Irish father fought in the infantry in World War I to earn his citizenship. Nobody wants illegal criminals here. President Joe Biden let the border run amok. But in the new New York Times/Siena University poll, a sizable majority said ICE had gone too far. 

Trump responded by saying he would expand his lawsuit against The Times to include the poll, because his rampaging vanity cannot accept falling numbers; the poll indicated that 42 percent of voters said he was ramping up to be one of the worst presidents in American history. We have watched in horror as Minneapolis has morphed into an eerie war zone: ICE claiming that its officers are allowed to barge into people’s homes without judicial warrants; an ICE agent shooting an unarmed mom with stuffed animals in her glove compartment three times until she was dead; ICE dragging a Minnesota man — a Hmong immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen with no criminal record — out of his house into the snow, wearing only underwear and Crocs; ICE detaining four children, including little Liam, from one school district. (An F.B.I. agent who wanted to investigate the ICE agent who shot the mom resigned after bureau officials told her to stop her inquiry.) 

“Why detain a 5-year-old?” a flustered Zena Stenvik, the town’s superintendent, keened at a press conference. It is clear the Trump crowd sees no difference between a criminal who crossed into the country illegally and a family that has applied for asylum and is doing everything the right way to stay here. 

My parents inculcated us with patriotism and gratitude for this country. I grew up surrounded by men in uniform. My mother carried around a pocket-size Constitution in her purse, along with miniature bottles of Tabasco. She did not want to see us on July 4 if we were not in red, white and blue. I know what America is meant to stand for. 

Trump has made America un-American.