Variety has great news: '‘Wuthering Heights’ Audiobook, Voiced by Aimee Lou Wood, Sees 440% Increase in Downloads Following Film Release'.
Heights are indeed getting wuthered.
Not only did Emerald Fennell’s bold take on the classic novel collect an impressive $83 million at the global box office this past weekend, but the Spotify audiobook version of the Emily Brontë story has also seen a dramatic revival. According to the public relations and communications firm Burson Global, “Wuthering Heights” has seen a 440% increase in audiobook consumption since the film trailer dropped last September.
According to data, this increase isn’t just repeat or nostalgia fans – first-time listeners to the audiobook increased by 260%. Their reports also indicate that Gen Z (ages 13-28) is particularly drawn to this classic, with this age group experiencing a 191% increase in streaming the audiobook. (Anna Tingley)
Good news on
IndieWire too as it reports that 'Wuthering Heights Puts Emerald Fennell in the Conversation for Highest-Grossing Female Directors'.
Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” this weekend opened to $88.5 million over the four-day weekend ($82 million in three days), all against a production budget of $80 million (before marketing costs). It’s not exactly a record-breaker, as it’s behind the domestic opening for plenty of other female-directed films, and it’s #14 in terms of 4-day openings over Presidents’ Day weekend. It even opened a little soft compared to some projections, which originally had “Wuthering Heights” reaching $40 million or even $50 million domestic before the weekend. It is however still a boon for Warner Bros., which now has had nine straight movies open to #1 dating back to last year (suddenly a lot is riding on Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!”).
But between her debut “Promising Young Woman” ($18.8 million) and “Saltburn” ($21 million), Fennell now has three movies that will crack the Top 100 on that Annenberg Inclusion Initiative report in a year, and it puts her in the conversation among some of the other top-performing female directors at the box office of all time. (Brian Welk)
And even more reviews of Wuthering Heights 2026:
The cinematography lingers on touch, breath and silence, turning longing into something tactile. The brilliant and pulsating Charli xcx soundtrack pushes the intensity further, blending gothic atmospheres with modern pop energy in the period setting. Paired with these visuals, the music instantly makes the story feel both Victorian and defiantly modern and bold. It draws outside the lines and rejects modesty. [...]
Several scenes are beautiful and deeply unsettling at once. While watching, I found myself unexpectedly shaken, even in tears at certain moments — not because the story felt softened, but because it felt magnified. Fennell does not resolve a famously problematic love story; instead, she aestheticizes it, leaving viewers to sit with something uncomfortable yet undeniably captivating. (Rachel Marlowe and Kate Rothermel)
For me, this is a very difficult film to rate. It is a noticeable departure from the source material, taking creative liberties that augment the story in such a damning way. However, on its own, if under a completely separate name, the film itself is not terrible; rather enjoyable, even. If this was a new love story about two people in the 1800s, with an overtly sexual tone, then it could have been quite an enjoyable watch. The story and plot is engaging and fun to watch unfold, and the way each actor plays off each other is very well done. That being said, it is not possible for me to keep these two works totally separate. One of the most famous and important books of the 19th century deserves a respectful and proper adaptation. If the movie was its own thing, then it would yield close to four stars, but keeping in mind all the questionable decisions and changes, I must dock it and give it three stars out of five. (Alfie Eville)
Yet, sparkly bandaids can’t fix the bullet holes Fennell shot in the heart of the story. She completely assassinates the main characters and abandons the second half of the novel. Fennell turns the abused, single mother Isabella into a “girlboss” in a consensual, submissive sexual relationship with Heathcliff. Nelly, the maid, is villainized in the film as the driving force between Catherine and Heathcliff, while in the book she is a lower class hero who seeks to protect Catherine from abuse.
The film itself attempts to shock the viewer — whether that be through the town’s erotic response to an execution, or Heathcliff’s sexual fascination with eggs — but consistently falls short.
While the cast portrayed their respective characters well, their performances cannot throw water on the fire that is the script. Adapting a beloved classic is no easy feat, especially one that has been adapted dozens of times before, but ignoring the soul of the book in its entirety is a challenge itself.
Fennell excludes the children that Catherine and Heathcliff have in the film, who in the novel go on to marry each other and break the generational cycle of abuse, instead choosing to kill Catherine after a miscarriage. While the tragedy itself was emotional, the film’s conclusion was unsatisfying. It’s as if Fennell gave a really interesting setup and walked away from the mic as soon as it was time to deliver the punchline. As “Wuthering Heights” ends, the audience is left wanting to know what the movie was about.
What was the message of that movie? Or, was there a message at all? (Ava Demcher)
Is this all so Victorian booklet for children who are in danger of dying that there needs to be a message? Really?
Fenell made “Wuthering Heights” not for bookworms but for cinephiles. The movie is stunningly shot. The mise en scene is just gorgeous in that it’s such a filthily excessive style that is common in Fenell movies. It’s a study of true filmmaking, but it’s not a true study of adaptation.
Director Guillermo Del Toro had a famous saying during the “Frankenstein” press tour that “Adapting a book is like marrying a widow. You have to respect the late husband, but on Saturdays, you are allowed to get it on.”
Emerald Fennel instead chose to spit on the husband’s grave and get it on every day instead. (Adrihanna Collins)
While the score, composed by Anthony Willis, is startlingly dark and majestic, the occasional interjection of a Charli xcx song is disappointing and jarring. It turns these scenes into what feels like a music video, adding to the never-ending list of things that make it impossible to take the film seriously.
It’s evident in both her interviews and the film itself that Fennell has slapped a beloved, canonical title over a cookie-cutter tragic romance in the hopes of drawing audiences excited by the idea of watching something “cultural.”
But her exclusion of any complexity in favor of numerous sex scenes make it clear that Fennell was aiming for a box-office hit instead of a literary tribute, much to the devastation of Brontë fans everywhere — and to the detriment of the story itself. (Amelia Barter)
The movie itself was good; however, instead of marketing something as an adaptation, it would’ve been better to be portrayed as a new story. In some parts, it seemed they slapped on the names of the known characters of “Wuthering Heights” and offered nothing else in similarity. (Ruby Johnson)
Glaring issues aside, “Wuthering Heights” has its moments, mainly via the lens of DP Linus Sandgren. There are some striking compositions, with Cathy’s white wedding train billowing across the crepuscular moor a highlight. And then there are the leeches… Overall, “Wuthering Heights” is a trainwreck, albeit a weirdly watchable one. It careers giddily through its run time (although one feels such a thematically weighty story should have more of a sense of gravity or heft), and you get the sense at least some of its curious absurdities are by design; that Emerald Fennell is thumbing her nose at anyone who ever took Emily Brontë’s baroque gothic fantasia seriously as a love story in the first place. (Kevin Ibbotson-Wight)
A surprising bright spot, however, came from the original soundtrack by Charli XCX. While initially cautious of what it would do to the film tonally, Charli masterfully blends orchestral elements with electronic soundscapes. For a moment, mixed with the excessive amount of fog, I could almost feel the gothic and supernatural elements that were seemingly lost from the rest of the film.
Ultimately, Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of prioritizing aesthetic over substance. In its attempt to modernize the moors for a commercial audience, the adaptation loses the very soul of the novel, turning a classic into a cheesy romance. (Madelyn Stewart)
To her credit, Fennell understands that it’s more fun to smash a dollhouse than to construct one meticulously. Her sledgehammer approach to party scenes in her previous films is rivaled by Wuthering Heights’s opening sequence of a public hanging. Though we are supposed to be in the late 18th century, the mood is more medieval. After a few moments of the hanged man’s dying gasps, a Charli xcx song floods the soundtrack (the truly terrifying track “House,” which she recorded with John Cale), and the crowd erupts in a carnal frenzy. People roar, some start fucking, a nun closes her eyes, and parents pull away their children. The scene does not exist in Brontë’s novel, but it’s somehow closest to the monstrous vitality of that world, a place where the dead refuse to die. Too bad that Fennell never gives her characters the chance to live. (Genevieve Yue)
It all adds up to an overheated mess. Thus, in the end, this “Wuthering Heights” might more aptly be titled “Withering Lows.” (Joseph McAleer)
Doubtless there will be more versions of Wuthering Heights. This is the more puzzling and challenging one. (Father Peter Malone)
The positive standout of this film is the cinematography. The film is very visually striking, with beautiful costuming and production design in every meticulously arranged frame. From the first shots of the film, Fennell is able to maintain a dark, slimy tone. [...]
However, it seems that Fennell wanted to make a movie that only works on mute. Throughout the film, composer Anthony Willis’ beautiful string-heavy score is attacked by Charli xcx’s auto-tuned vocals from the soundtrack album. While there are moments where Charli’s songs work well, such as in the opening scene of the movie, most of the time her songs feel out of place. (Thais Zboichyk)
The Independent reports that the film 'has torn the Independent’s culture desk apart' and goes on to quote the opinions of different staff members.
Screen Rant claims that 'Wuthering Heights Officially Rewrites The Book’s Biggest Twist'--seriously 'officially rewrites'? Are all our copies of the novel to be requisitioned and 'officially rewritten'?
A contributor to
Vox makes a point that we all know already but which may be beside the point when it comes to the film adaptation: 'Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is a million times edgier than Emerald Fennell’s'.
Brontë punishes her readers for even liking her characters. Its most charismatic and compelling characters, the doomed lovers Heathcliff and Catherine, are also two of its greatest monsters. Feral and violent, Brontë’s Heathcliff and Catherine ruin lives and inflict wanton amounts of pain for the sheer sport of it all, but they also love each other overwhelmingly, ferociously, enough to tear down the world all around each other. Reading about them, it’s both difficult to wish them well and impossible not to feel that they really should be together. That contradiction is what creates the tension that powers the reader through this brutal, bleak book, with all its misery and squalor. [...]
Brontë’s Cathy beats her servants, her horses, her husband. She flies into uncontrollable rages and plots to destroy her enemies. Fennell’s Cathy offers the occasional mean girl putdown, swiftly belied by her beautiful tear-swollen eyes, which reveal her true purity of heart. She is not so much passionate and angry as she is pragmatic and a little bit petty.
Brontë’s Heathcliff slowly and systematically bankrupts his abuser and then ruins the man’s son. Fennell’s Heathcliff kindly cares for his adopted father in his broken old age. Brontë’s Heathcliff tortures the feckless Isabella’s puppy, then seduces her and abuses her and their child. Fennell’s Heathcliff mostly stares in confusion as Isabella writhes in pleasure on the end of a dog’s leash, having not only enthusiastically consented to the treatment, but in fact instigated it. When onscreen Catherine tells Isabella that Heathcliff will eat her alive, the moment feels absurd: The audience knows by this point that Isabella is an oversexed weirdo who will do whatever she wants with reserved, pliant Heathcliff. (In fact, she does.)
No adaptation must be absolutely faithful to its source text in order to be good, but it has to do something. It has to have an energy, a source of tension, a reason to exist. But having excised the tension of Brontë’s novel from her film, Fennell replaces it with absolutely nothing. Instead, you are asked only to watch beautiful people engage in mild BDSM play upon the beautiful moors, and then die through no fault of their own.
All that gleefully perverse production design made promises, and she follows through on absolutely none of them. Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” reaches no heights at all. (Constance Grady)
Slash Film says that 'Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights Has Been Accused Of Going Too Far – It Should've Gone Further':
This ache for trashiness is not mere prurience on my part. Indeed, the film goes out of its way to cater to the prurience in the audience. No, my frustration with the film's refusal to tip full-bore into a trashy soap-opera narrative is also implied in its heightened style. Fennell got some excellent work from her photographer and production designers to create an unreal space for her film to take place in. One might be reminded of the films of Ken Russell, complete with their sexual excess.
The heightened look very much leaves the door open for a more extreme approach. Some might be upset that Fennell took her film so far from the source material. I am frustrated that she didn't take it far enough. She could have turned "Wuthering Heights" into a straight-up horror movie. What if Heathcliff and Cathy murder Edgar and can only dispose of the body by eating it? What if Nelly (Hong Chau) or Isabella (Alison Oliver) found out about the murder? The line between an angst-riddled romance like "Wuthering Heights" and 1950s issues of "Tales from the Crypt" is startlingly fine, and Fennell could easily have taken her film into EC Comics territory.
And this would merely be following the path that Fennell herself laid out for us. It wouldn't have been surprising at all. And it would have certainly been more fun. By backing off and ending "Wuthering Heights" as a tragedy, it merely highlights that Heathcliff and Cathy are kind of bad people whose own actions brought nothing but pain and misery. I love a good tragedy, of course, but it's not a great tragedy at the end of the day. But if Fennell had added murder, we would have had something. (Witney Seibold)
Den of Geek wonders 'Why Does Book Fidelity Seem to Matter Only for Emerald Fennell?'
Collider, not unfairly, surmised that Brontë is “rolling in her grave.”
Brontë probably is, to which I ask… so what?!
Why does it matter so much that Emerald Fennell personally deviated from an oft-adapted novel to craft her own maximalist fantasia? She is not the first filmmaker to take striking liberties with Brontë. In fact, it was not until the 2011 Andrea Arnold miniseries starring Kaya Scodelario and James Howson that a major adaptation attempted to cover the full multigenerational breadth of the book. Until then, most followed William Wyler’s lead from the classic 1939 Hollywood version starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon by ending the story with Cathy’s death and Heathcliff’s plea she haunt him forevermore. Arnold’s miniseries also holds the distinction of being the first version to cast a Black actor as Heathcliff. Still, before and after we’ve had Ralph Fiennes, Tom Hardy, and Timothy Dalton, among others, play Heathcliff, and films like the ‘39 version which conspicuously soften Cathy’s selfishness or Heathcliff’s sadism. [...]
It is easy to wonder whether Fennell is held to a different standard than other filmmakers, perhaps because of her tendencies for decadence and excess (and questionable class subtexts) courting acrimony from a specific, popular lens of modern online criticism. Or, perhaps, it is because she’s a woman. Truthfully, though, it might be less about Fennell than the source material. While del Toro and Villeneuve, like Fennell, had intense formative experiences growing up with the novels they adapted, Wuthering Heights is a far more universal foundational text for thousands due to being on the English curriculum of most secondary or high schools on either side of the Atlantic.
But at the end of the day, art is much more fulfilling when engaged on its own terms versus comparing it side by side with a text. The best films based on books generally make mincemeat of their source material—The Godfather, Jaws, The Shining—and as del Toro himself once said, “At the end of the day, I say adapting is like marrying a widow. You can pay respect to the late husband, but on Saturdays, you gotta get it on.”
Being able to get it on is one thing Fennell’s Wuthering Heights has no trouble with, especially when Charli XCX ballads drift across the 19th century moors. (David Crow)
Perhaps it’s silly to berate “Wuthering Heights” for its failures, given Hollywood has always been a big-budget exercise in the cross-pollination of celebrity. The quality of engagement makes no difference as long as the publicity machine continues to churn.
Recently there has been no corner of the internet in which you couldn’t find Robbie, Fennell or Elordi answering questions you never asked, with anecdotes you never cared to hear. What is perhaps more gripping than Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” – more complex, more laden with dramatic tension and cosmic irony and more accurate to Brontë’s vision of intergenerational violence – is Hollywood’s crisis of legitimacy playing out before us. (Kasumi Borczyk)
The Spectator continues with the debate on whether Gen Z is capable of reading Wuthering Heights or not.
Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë are rightly hailed as heroines of feminism, but their lives and works far outstrip the narrow boundaries of such fashionable causes: they are astounding evidence of the triumph of the human spirit in the face of pitiless adversity. No wonder that we find them difficult to understand in our debased age. (Nigel Jones)
“Wuthering Heights” is a satisfying listen as well as a canny solution to the problem of how to follow up a breakthrough record. (Mark Richardson)
Ultimately, the album makes the most sense with the context that is a backdrop to a much larger project. Many of the songs fade together when listened to in succession, and while the project is very ambient and atmospheric, it wouldn’t be in my typical listening rotation.
However, the soundtrack was a very smart move for Charli xcx’s career. While “brat” achieved Charli xcx her most mainstream success, it also created expectations for her artistry centered on edgy, danceable tracks. (Jessica Johnson)
Keighley News features the local buses that take visitors to Brontë-related places.
The Telegraph and Argus recommends a trip to Thornton and the Brontë Birthplace.
Daily Mail goes beyond a simple visit to the area and spotlights some houses on the market in Brontë Country.
Infobae (in Spanish) has an article on Viriginia Woolf's opinion of Emily Brontë.
0 comments:
Post a Comment