Academy Award winner Emerald Fennell‘s anticipated “Wuthering Heights” adaptation just got buzzier with Academy Award nominee Margot Robbie and BAFTA nominee Jacob Elordi attached to star as Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff.
MRC has tapped LuckyChap to produce the upcoming feature film — written, directed and produced by Fennell, based on the classic romance novel by Emily Brontë. This marks LuckyChap and Fennell’s third collaboration following 2020’s “Promising Young Woman” (which won Fennell the Oscar for best original screenplay) and 2023’s “Saltburn.” Fennell also had a featured role in LuckyChap’s $1.4 billion-grossing and Academy Award-winning “Barbie” movie, which Robbie produced and starred in last year.
“Wuthering Heights” is in pre-production, gearing up for a 2025 shoot in the U.K.
Fennell announced her plans to adapt “Wuthering Heights” as her third feature in July, posting a surprise announcement to social media with a graphic that reads, “Be with me always – Take any form – Drive me mad,” a line from the novel. At the time, all that was known about the project was that the filmmaker would reteam with MRC, the studio behind her saucy psychological thriller “Saltburn.”
With the addition of Robbie, Elordi and LuckyChap, a good many of the primary “Saltburn” players are officially reunited for the new movie. And if Fennell wanted to add one more from that roster, Barry Keoghan, who played the bathwater-slurping con man protagonist, recently told Variety he’s interested. “Anything that Emerald puts her hands on, I’m there. She’s incredible,” he said.
Robbie has also been vocal in championing Fennell’s unique sensibilities after producing both the filmmaker’s movies. “Emerald immerses you into a world so quickly. She’s so masterful at tone and plot,” Robbie said reflecting on “Saltburn’s” more shocking scenes in a January interview with Variety. “She gets in your brain and she kind of taps into the most depraved parts of it, so that you’re complicit in the story. That’s the watercooler moment — the thing that people are talking about two weeks afterwards.”
Still, audiences have been waiting for the moment Robbie would appear on camera in one of Fennell’s films. Carey Mulligan was nominated for the best actress Oscar for starring in “Promising Young Woman” — a meaty role Robbie admitted was a “hard one to step aside for” — and Keoghan and Elordi took the lead for “Saltburn,” with supporting roles for Mulligan and Rosamund Pike. Seems the third time was the charm.
Robbie’s more immediate “Barbie”-follow-up is a starring role in Kogonada’s “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey,” due out May 2025, while LuckyChap’s (which she co-founded with Tom Ackerley and Josey McNamara) most recent film, “My Old Ass,” is in theaters now and the company’s first foray into live theatre, the off-Broadway play “The Big Gay Jamboree,” recently launched. After having a breakthrough year with “Saltburn” and his role as Elvis Presley in Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla,” Elordi next stars in “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” directed by Justin Kurzel, and Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein.”
Robbie is represented by Entertainment 360, CAA, Aran Michael Management, attorney Jeff Bernstein and Narrative. Elordi is represented by Gersh. Fennell is represented by UTA and Entertainment 360.
Deadline was first to report news of Robbie, Elordi and LuckyChap’s involvement in the project.
From Variety US