Too sexy or erotic? Why everyone is so shocked about the ‘Wuthering Heights’ trailer

The first trailer for Emerald Fennell's adaptation of Emily Brontë's 1847 classic novel “Wuthering Heights” came out this week and it’s proving to be divisive, shocking fans of the source material and getting many online to call it out for being "soft porn".

Fennell, whose film Promising Young Woman won her an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 2021, also directed the 2023 thriller Saltburn, which went viral due to scenes involving graveyards and bathtubs. If you know, you know.  

For her third feature film, she’s adapting a literary classic, starring Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi and Adolescence star Owen Cooper. 

It comes out on Valentine’s Day 2026 and from the looks of the trailer, it’s going to be a steamy affair – sexual tension, revealing corsets, raunchy bread kneading, suggestive fingering of eggs and fish, and a tone more overtly erotic than the mood conjured by Brontë's Gothic tragedy.  

Granted, the passionate story of destructive love between Catherine and Heathcliff always was a tale of powerful yearning, but Fennell has really upped the sexy ante.  

Check it out for yourself:  

The taglines “Drive Me Mad” and “Come Undone” have been going viral, and the fact that the music for the film will include original songs by Charli XCX has wet appetites even further – especially off the back of the singer’s banner year in 2024, when everything was ‘Brat’. 

However, social media discourse regarding the trailer hasn’t all been positive, as many are bemoaning the fact that the book’s erotic charge, which is due to the lack of sexual contact between the two protagonists, is being cheapened by what many have dubbed “50 Shades of Brontë.” 

Except many are forgetting the umlaut on the ‘e’ - and without wanting to topple into pedantry, that diacritical mark matters. The Brontë sisters, without a diaeresis, would make the finale ‘e’ mute – and it most certainly isn’t.  

Moving on.

The racy nature of the trailer has clearly confused fans of the book. “Did they really need to make Wuthering Heights this steamy?” asked one user, with another adding: “It looks weirdly pervy.”

Others raised concerns about whether the forbidden literary romance, featuring plenty of musings on social class divisions, will be dropped in favour of a Saltburn and Bridgerton-coded steaminess with a hyperpop soundtrack.  

One X user wrote: “Like girl if you wanted to make a horny period piece then do that. no need to terrorise emily bronte."

Further sources of discontent have been the casting of Elordi as Heathcliff (who is described in the book as having dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, and is thought to have come from a Roma or Gypsy background), as well as Robbie as Catherine (who is in her late teens in the book and far less blonde).  

Adding to that is the 1980s-style wedding dress seen in the trailer, which many have pointed out as not being period accurate. 

Check out more reactions to the trailer below:

It has also been reported that a test screening for the film last month produced “mixed” reactions and a few raised eyebrows due to the graphic sexual scenes. 

World Of Reel reported on the audience’s reaction and details of the plot which feature “hyper-sexualized imagery - far more explicit than any previous adaptation of this material”. 

“The film opens with a public hanging that quickly descends into grotesque absurdity, as the condemned man ejaculates mid-execution, sending the onlooking crowd into a kind of orgiastic frenzy. A nun even fondles the corpse’s visible erection”. 

The report continued: “Later, a woman is strapped into a horse’s reins for a BDSM-tinged encounter. There are several masturbation scenes shot in that now-signature Fennell style - intimate, clinical, and purposefully discomforting”. 

As always, it’s important not to judge too hastily and reserve judgement until the film has actually been seen. But how to explain the already strong backlash against the trailer?  

It could be genuine concern that a beloved book doesn’t get betrayed by a need to equate desire with sex and by shabbily ticking zeitgeist boxes (Robbie! Sex! Charli XCX!).

It could also be revealing of how many are questioning the need for gratuitous sex scenes in cinema if they don’t serve the narrative.

There’s a case to be made for problematic whitewashing – but then again, "Wuthering Heights" has been adapted several times before, and Heathcliff was played by white actors in the 1939 version (Laurence Olivier), the 1970 version (then-future James Bond actor Timothy Dalton) and the 1992 take (Ralph Fiennes), while a black actor (James Howson) portrayed the character in the 2011 adaptation... All these adaptations were well received.

Could it simply be the work of conservative sex negativity so often seen in the trad-wife nostalgia that continues to problematically pearl-clutch its way onto Instagram feeds, leading to the question: Would people be so up in arms about the Wuthering Heights trailer if it was directed by a man?

Or it could simply be less about prudish puritanism, sexist double standards and Gen Z becoming sex-phobic but rather a sign that cinemagoers are increasingly discerning. Cinephiles are now attuned to the fact that selling movies through sexually charged buzz and the promise of explicitness may have worked in the past but that these tactics can prove a little cheap and more revealing of studios desperate for hype.

We’ll have to wait until Valentine’s Day 2026 to find out.