Would push Heathcliff off the door.
Photo: Warner Bros.
The women behind Wuthering Heights are thinking big, and we’re not just talking about Jacob Elordi’s size. Director Emerald Fennell began conversations about the film by telling star and producer Margot Robbie, “‘I want this to be this generation’s Titanic.’” Yes, that Titanic, the one that has made over $2 billion since debuting in theaters in 1997. Robbie recalled Fennell’s aspirations for a gothic, seductive Brontë adaptation in a December 4 interview with British Vogue. “‘I went to the cinema to watch [Baz Luhrmann’s] Romeo + Juliet eight times and I was on the ground crying when I wasn’t allowed to go back for a ninth,’” Robbie quoted the Saltburn director. “‘I want it to be that.’”
The comparisons to both sexy ’90s romantic dramas would point to Elordi being their Leonardo DiCaprio, but Robbie has a loftier analog. “I honestly think he’s our generation’s Daniel Day-Lewis,” she said of her Heathcliff, the book’s hulking, depressed, dashing love interest. The casting has stirred up debate because book readers have interpreted the character as a person of color due to Emily Brontë’s description of him as a “dark-skinned gypsy.” Robbie did not directly address the controversy, but she defended Elordi and emphasized the traditional (white) leading men cast before him. “I saw him play Heathcliff,” she told Vogue. “And he is Heathcliff. I’d say, just wait. Trust me, you’ll be happy. It’s a character that has this lineage of other great actors who’ve played him, from Laurence Olivier to Richard Burton and Ralph Fiennes to Tom Hardy.” Wuthering Heights has great expectations to live up to.
