Emerald Fennell's 'Saltburn' Follow-Up Will Be a New Adaptation of 'Wuthering Heights'

No matter how you felt about Saltburn, there's no denying that it was one of the buzziest, most talked-about films of 2023. From bathwater memes and debates about the ending to the resurgence of Sophie Ellis-Bextor banger "Murder on the Dance Floor" on the music charts, its cultural impact was pretty much second only to the juggernaut that was "Barbenheimer." 

Though the film failed to make much of a splash during awards season, all eyes have since been on director Emerald Fennell to see what she'll do next. And it looks as though the former Call the Midwife star is planning to return to her period drama roots, teasing a forthcoming adaptation of the classic Emily Bronte novel Wuthering Heights. Fennell, who won an Oscar for writing the controversial female revenge flick Promising Young Woman (and got a nomination for directing it), shared an image on social media that features a skeletal emblem surrounded by the lines "Be with me always – Take any form – Drive me mad" from the novel. (It's basically peak Bronte, and one of the novel's most famous quotes.)

Published by Bronte under the pseudonym Ellis Bell about a year before her death, Wuthering Heights is the story of the dysfunctional and frequently destructive relationship between two families: The Earnshaws and the Lintons. A saga of obsession, passion, and tragedy, the novel's core is built around the doomed romance between Earnshaw's daughter Catherine and Heathcliff, an orphan the family adopted at a young age. Their love story is dark, achingly romantic, and utterly toxic by turns, which is basically a Venn diagram of all Fennell's interests as a storyteller.

“I’ve always been obsessed with the gothic,” Fennell wrote in a January 2024 column for the Los Angeles Times. “Whether it was Edward Gorey’s children who are variously choked by peaches, sucked dry by leeches, or smothered by rugs, Du Maurier’s imperiled heroines or the disturbing erotic power of Angela Carter’s fairy tales, the gothic world has always had me in its grip. It’s a genre where comedy and horror, revulsion and desire, sex and death are forever entwined, where every exchange is heavy with the threat of violence, or sex or both.”

And let's face it, there's almost no story that exemplifies the appeal of the Gothic more clearly than Wuthering Heights. Fennell's long-established interests in boundary-breaking women, class tensions, and frequently disturbing central romance would make her a perfect fit to tell this story. I know I can't be the only person dying to find out how she envisions Cathy Earnshaw.

Wuthering Heights has been adapted for screens, both large and small, many times over the years, with familiar names like Laurence Olivier, Charlton Heston, Timothy Dalton, Ralph Fiennes, and Tom Hardy taking on the role of Heathcliff. The most recent film adaptation was 2011's Wuthering Heights, starring Kaya Scodelario and James Howson, exploring Bronte's language to describe Heathcliff's race by casting a Black actor.

According to Deadline, the project will reunite Fennell with MRC, the studio behind Saltburn. No casting or other details about her Wuthering Heights are known as yet, and even the idea that it will be a period-set piece is little more than enthusiastic speculation. Fingers crossed for more details sooner rather than later.