The Short Answer
You searched for the new Wuthering Heights film, so here is the twenty twenty-six movie set against Emily Brontë’s book, every big difference, and how the older films compare.
Spoiler level: spoilers for the novel and for the film’s plot. The short answer is that it is a loose reimagining, not a faithful adaptation. It covers roughly the first half of the book, cuts the second generation, and adds an explicit affair the novel never shows.
The Facts
First, the basics, as of October twenty twenty-six. Emerald Fennell wrote and directed the film, and Warner Bros released it on February thirteenth. Margot Robbie plays Catherine, Jacob Elordi plays Heathcliff, Hong Chau is Nelly, Shazad Latif is Edgar, and Alison Oliver is Isabella.
It runs about two hours and fifteen minutes. The reported budget is eighty million dollars, and it earned roughly two hundred and forty million worldwide. Critics were split, with Rotten Tomatoes somewhere between the high fifties and low sixties, and audiences gave it a B grade. It reached HBO Max on May first.
The Title in Quotation Marks
Even the title is a clue. The film’s title is written with quotation marks around it, and Fennell has said that a book this dense cannot be fully adapted, so she is making a version of it. She has also described wanting to recreate how a teenage girl feels reading the book for the first time.
So think of it as an emotional memory of the novel, not a page by page translation. That framing matters, because most of the differences you are about to hear are deliberate choices, not accidents, and plenty of viewers loved them.
It Stops at Catherine’s Death
Difference number one is structure. The novel has thirty-four chapters and two generations. The film covers Catherine and Heathcliff from childhood through her death, and then it ends on his grief.
So there is no grown up Cathy, no Linton Heathcliff, and no Hareton in the film as the book’s central trio. The novel’s last third, with the forced marriage, Heathcliff’s death, and the young couple learning to read together, is gone. Reviewers also report that the frame story, Lockwood meeting Heathcliff in eighteen oh one, is dropped.
Hindley and Mr Earnshaw
Difference number two is Hindley. In the book, Catherine’s brother is the one who humiliates Heathcliff after their father dies, drinks himself to ruin, and loses the whole estate to him. Reports say the film cuts Hindley completely.
Instead, old Mr Earnshaw, played by Martin Clunes, takes over much of Hindley’s cruelty. That changes the logic of the revenge. In the novel, Heathcliff destroys the family that wronged him, generation by generation. Without Hindley and Hareton, that slow, brutal second act has nowhere to go.
Isabella
Difference number three is Isabella. In the book she is Edgar Linton’s sister, a sheltered eighteen year old who falls for Heathcliff’s dark good looks, elopes with him, and quickly discovers a monster. She writes to Nelly asking whether he is a man or a devil, and eventually she escapes in the snow.
In the film she is Edgar’s ward, not his sister, and her relationship with Heathcliff is described as knowing and sadomasochistic. The book’s Isabella is a victim of a cruel husband. The film’s Isabella makes choices. That is a major shift in tone, and it changes who we feel sorry for.
Nelly Dean
Difference number four is Nelly. In Brontë’s book she is the narrator, a busy meddler who withholds information and carries tales, but the book leaves it to us to judge her. She is human, defensive and unreliable, which is half the fun.
In the film, she becomes an active schemer. Reviewers report that she arranges the moment when Heathcliff overhears Catherine talking about marrying Edgar, and that she also keeps his letters from Catherine. In the novel he overhears by accident, and Nelly spots him slipping out and tells Catherine to hush, far too late.
The Affair
Difference number five is the affair. In the book, after Heathcliff returns, he and Catherine are tangled up emotionally, but there is no ongoing sexual relationship. Their one meeting before she dies is a desperate embrace and an argument, with Nelly nearby.
The film adds an intense sexual affair after her marriage, and it has Heathcliff offering to kill Edgar. The novel’s love story is about obsession more than intimacy. Many readers will feel this is the biggest change to the book’s mood, though it is plainly what a lot of the film’s audience came to see.
Catherine’s Death
Difference number six is how Catherine dies. In the novel she starves herself in a rage, falls into a brain fever, and recovers for months, as a weaker woman. Later, on the night of that last meeting with Heathcliff, she gives birth to a daughter and dies two hours afterward.
In the film, according to reports, she is pregnant, loses the baby, and dies of sepsis, and Heathcliff reaches her only after she has gone. That removes the most important link in the book, the surviving daughter who ties the two halves of the story together and carries the ending.
Is Heathcliff Black
Difference number seven is Heathcliff himself, and I want to be fair here. In the novel he is a foundling from Liverpool, he is called a dark-skinned gypsy, and one character guesses that he might be a Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway. The text never states his ancestry.
Jacob Elordi is a white actor, and some critics objected. Fennell defended the choice, saying Elordi looked exactly like the illustration of Heathcliff in the first copy of the book she read. The text leaves room for many readings, but the casting changes how his outsider status lands. I cover the full question in my characters video.
Look and Sound
Difference number eight is style. The book is a bleak, cold, gothic ghost story set on a harsh, windswept moor. The film is a heightened, almost fantasy version, with extravagant costumes, surreal interiors, and a soundtrack of songs written by Charli XCX.
Anthony Willis wrote the score, and the lead single was called House, with John Cale. If you want real moor grit, you may find it too glossy. If you want a feverish, modern romance, the gloss is the point, and it explains why so many viewers loved it.
What the Film Keeps
It is not all change. The film keeps the core of the story: the foundling brought home by Mr Earnshaw, the childhood bond with Catherine, the class gap that pulls them apart, Heathcliff’s departure, and his return as a rich man to a woman who has married someone else. Those beats are all straight from Brontë.
It also keeps the book’s wildest spirit. Brontë’s Catherine is selfish, fierce and doomed, and she says she is Heathcliff. Whatever you think of the sex and the costumes, the film is aiming at the same raw, unreasonable feeling, and for many viewers that is the real adaptation.
What Book Fans Miss
What book fans miss is the consequence. In the novel the love story is only the first half. The second half shows what Heathcliff’s obsession does to children who never chose it, and it is bleak, funny, and strangely tender.
The film has no room for Hareton learning to read, or for Cathy giving a book to the boy she once mocked. Without that, Heathcliff’s cruelty has no visible price, and the story reads more like a romance than the tragedy about cruelty that Brontë wrote.
The 1939 Film
Now the older versions. William Wyler’s nineteen thirty nine film stars Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, and it was nominated for eight Oscars, winning one, for cinematography. It adapts only sixteen of the thirty-four chapters, so it also leaves out the second generation.
It ends with an invented scene of the two ghosts walking away through the snow, which is not in the book. For decades this was the standard picture of the story: a doomed romance, rather than a revenge tragedy that stretches across two families and many years.
The 1992 Film
Peter Kosminsky’s nineteen ninety two film stars Ralph Fiennes as Heathcliff, and Juliette Binoche, who plays both Catherines. It runs under two hours, and it is one of the few major film versions that keeps the second generation, with the daughter and Hareton.
Critics were mostly unkind, and I would not call it great cinema. But if your priority is the book’s structure, it is closer than the others. It even opens with Sinéad O’Connor appearing as Emily Brontë herself, so the author frames the story.
The 2011 Film
Andrea Arnold’s twenty eleven film premiered at the Venice Film Festival, and it won an award there for its cinematography. It stars Kaya Scodelario and James Howson, and it was widely reported as the first major version to cast a Black actor as the adult Heathcliff.
It concentrates on the childhood and teenage years, and it feels rough, muddy and physical, which is how the moor feels in the book. It is also the least glamorous of the lot, and that is exactly its strength. Reviews were generally good.
Which Should You Watch
So which one? If you want the plot as written, read the book, or watch the nineteen ninety two film. If you want the cold, physical mood of the moor, try Arnold’s film. If you want a lush, modern, steamy reimagining, the twenty twenty-six film is exactly that.
But none of them show what makes the novel unusual: two generations, two narrators, and an ending that heals as much as it hurts. For that you need the book. It is longer and stranger than any film, and I think it is worth the trip.
Your Turn
Did you read the book before the film, or after? Did the changes bother you, or did you love them? Tell me in the comments, because I really want to hear your take on this version.
If you enjoyed this, subscribe for more, and watch my Wuthering Heights ending explained next. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.
