So long 2025; hello 2026

The Yorkshire Post looks back on the cultural highlights of 2025.

The theatre also hosted the world premiere of Emma Rice’s adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock's thriller North by Northwest. Northern Ballet brought a revival of choreographer Cathy Marston’s wonderful adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre to Leeds Grand Theatre. (Yvette Huddleston)

But of course most sites are looking ahead to 2026. HuffPost lists '26 Things To Get Excited About In The World Of Entertainment In 2026' including

Wuthering Heights looks set to become one of the year’s most talked-about blockbusters

Emerald Fennell sparked no end of discourse with 2023’s Saltburn, which she’s following up with a unique new adaptation of Wuthering Heights starring two of Hollywood’s biggest names right now, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.

Already, the film has come under fire for a variety of reasons, with both the director and star Margot urging critics to wait until they’ve actually seen the movie before they pass comment.

Meanwhile, a rumoured test screening appeared to suggest that Emerald’s take on the Emily Brontë novel makes the drain-gurgling, grave-humping, serial-murdering antics of Saltburn look positively tame by comparison. (Daniel Welsh)

Express includes it on a similar list:

Wuthering Heights

Released February 14

Purists, look away! Saltburn director Emerald Fennell's film adaptation of Emily Brontë's heart-thumping classic love story promises to be a steamy and shocking affair - its racy trailer has already raised eyebrows. Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie play the star-crossed lovers Heathcliff and Cathy, set against the backdrop of the Yorkshire moors. (Samantha Wostear, Stefan Kyriazis, Matt Nixson)

Independent also lists '20 movies to look out for in 2026' including

“Wuthering Heights”

It felt as if everyone had an opinion about this even before we saw its first trailer, such is the power of the Saltburn filmmaker and master discourse-spinner Emerald Fennell. Margot Robbie is Catherine. Jacob Elordi is Heathcliff. Charli xcx is doing the soundtrack. You can practically hear the outrage already. But what’s with those mysterious quote marks around the title? Could it be that Fennell has taken quite extreme liberties with her adaptation of Emily Brontë’s sumptuous novel? And that we shouldn’t get too angry about a movie that, according to an early test screening report, features… um… “stylised depravity” and “clinical masturbation”? This will inevitably break our collective brains this Valentine’s Day, but hopefully in a good way. (13 February) (Jacob Stolworthy and Adam White)

The Guardian turns its gaze to the music of 2026:

Charli xcx – Wuthering Heights

Charli xcx has described her soundtrack to Emerald Fennell’s forthcoming film adaptation of Wuthering Heights as “raw, wild, sexual, gothic and British”. Certainly, the first track released from it, the John Cale collaboration House, couldn’t have been more different from the sound of her epochal 2024 album Brat – a homage to Cale’s old band the Velvet Underground that also bore the influence of industrial music – and that, one suspects, might be part of the point.

 Released 13 February (Alexis Petridis)

The Wall Street Journal does the same:

One of the most exciting examples of the latter is English singer Charli XCX, born Charlotte Aitchison, whose album “Brat” was the defining release of 2024. That record was steeped in electronics, sharply minimal and utterly of the moment. Which makes her next release, the soundtrack to Emerald Fennell’s film adaptation of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights”—the film and album come out on Feb. 13—such an intriguing proposition. Its single “Chains of Love” is a hybrid of new and old, with orchestral flourishes bouncing off the singer’s voice, which is processed to sound pinched and distant—as if echoing across a windswept moor, perhaps. (Mark Richardson)

The Indiependent discusses 'The Gothic Adaptation Renaissance'.

When the first trailer for Emerald Fennell’s new adaptation of Wuthering Heights earlier this year, it sparked major controversy among fans of Emily Brontë’s Gothic classic—for everything from its casting and costumes, to its soundtrack and subject matter. We are undoubtedly experiencing a Gothic book-to-screen Renaissance right now (Mike Flanagan I’m looking at you), though in some cases, maybe we should question why directors are choosing to adapt Gothic classics, arguably to the detriment of the original literature and its legacy.

Starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, who are deemed by some as having ‘iPhone faces’ too modern for historical films, the Wuthering Heights trailer sent the internet into outrage over its polarising spin on such a beloved book. Not only is the teaser soundtracked to an orchestral rendition of Charli XCX’s recent hit ‘Everything is romantic’, it is also interspersed with some really steamy scenes that certainly weren’t penned by Brontë in 1847. While the film’s erotic themes veer away from Wuthering Heights, which is much more concerned with romantic obsession and revenge, it must be of importance that the film’s poster places quotation marks around the title: “Wuthering Heights”. Could it be that the film itself will be hyperaware of its diversion from the literary canon, or perhaps it will be a pastiche of the Gothic ‘romances’ of the nineteenth century? Considering Fennell’s penchant for being subversive and boundary-pushing in her other films, this doesn’t seem too implausible.

Even the film’s casting director, Kharmel Cochrane, responded to criticism over Fennell’s flimsy interpretation of the source material, telling Deadline that “there’s definitely going to be some English lit fans that are not going to be happy”. Fennell also received backlash over her decision to ask Elordi to play Heathcliff, a character whose ethnicity is famously ambiguous. Although Brontë only offers vague descriptions of Heathcliff’s ethnicity, his racial and social ‘othering’ is central to the hostility he faces from wider society. I stand amongst those fans who feel that casting a white actor in this role erodes the nuances of race and social class that permeate the novel’s plot. Eroticising the narrative is one thing, but the ethnicity of a character should always be a vital sticking point in book-to-screen adaptations. The novel’s preoccupation with ‘otherness’ also aligns closely with the nature of the Gothic genre, and is something Emily Brontë would likely have recognised on a personal level in her father’s decision to change the family’s original Irish surname, ‘Brunty’.

Slated for a Valentine’s Day 2026 release, speculation on how Fennell’s adaptation will fare with devout Brontë fans is sure to continue for the next few months, and the abundance of cultural commentary around it will certainly be enough to get audiences to cinemas. I expect it will definitely have a super viral moment online too, taking the reins from its depraved and raunchy predecessor, Saltburn (2023) – early test screenings have received some mixed reviews, with one viewer describing it as “aggressively provocative”.

Fennell is certainly not the only contemporary director sinking her teeth into nineteenth century Gothic literature. (Freya Parker)

BBC News looks back on Yorkshire's Hollywoodesque year.

In April, Hollywood descended on the Yorkshire Dales, for Emerald Fennell's adaption of Wuthering Heights, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.

Based on Emily Bronte's classic 1847 novel and set in bleak moorland, the production gave visitors and locals a glimpse of Robbie, playing Cathy, filming in a white wedding gown.

She, and other cast members, stayed at hotel Simonstone Hall, near Hawes.

A staff member said Robbie was "very lovely" and enjoyed a Sunday roast and afternoon tea there with her husband and new baby.

Filming locations also included Arkengarthdale, Swaledale and the village of Low Row, with the base camp near Reeth.

Rebecca Yorke, director of the Bronte Parsonage Museum, located at the former Bronte family home in Haworth, said that every "screen or theatre adaptation brings something fresh for contemporary audiences".

"It is a testimony of Emily's legacy that her writing continues to inspire creatives today and we look forward to seeing what Emerald Fennell's adaptation adds to the mix," she said. (Fiona Callow)

Vogue anticipates Margot Robbie's (and Jacob Elordi's) method dressing for the Wuthering Heights promotional tour.

Wuthering Heights

While Emerald Fennell’s forthcoming film is already stirring up conversation thanks to its surprising costumes, Margot Robbie and stylist Andrew Mukamal are already plotting a fashion fantasia for the press tour. “The couture shows are in January. So we can see what comes out of that,” Robbie told British Vogue. Maybe, if we’re lucky, co-star Jacob Elordi will break out the cravat again. (Hannah Jackson)

Kveller reviews John Irving's novel Queen Esther.

Magic and humor fill the pages, as do Yiddish words for genitalia, a lively debate about circumcision, tattoos quoting “Jane Eyre” and diminutive Jewish wrestlers. (Lior Zaltzman)

La Razón (Spain) reviews the film adaptation of The Help.

No desvelaremos, por supuesto, el tramposo giro de guion que desarticula el punto de vista de la normalidad impuesto por esa asistenta que duerme en el desván, como en las viejas novelas góticas, y que finalmente sucumbe a los viriles encantos de un señor Rochester que nunca debe de haber leído “Jane Eyre”. El giro, decíamos, transforma a la película, y a su discurso ideológico, pero lo hace a expensas de desempolvar, de un modo un tanto frívolo, el manual de malas conductas de la segunda ola del feminismo, aquel que blandía el “contra violación, castración” como indiscutible mantra. (Sergi Sánchez) (Translation)