Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, recognized for starring in Barbie and Saltburn, are to affix forces in a serious new movie adaptation of Wuthering Heights.
The Australian actors will play Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff in director Emerald Fennell's adaptation of the basic Emily Bronte novel, set on the tempestuous Yorkshire moors.
They could also be two of Hollywood's hottest stars, and it could be one of the crucial enduring love tales ever written, however their casting has left many movie followers unimpressed.
“Did anyone actually read the book before deciding this?” asked the Independent's film critic Clarisse Loughrey.
Some identified that Catherine is in her teenagers in the ebook, whereas Heathcliff is described in the novel, written in 1847, as “dark-skinned”.
The Collider critic and editor Maggie Boccella vented: “It is *painfully* obvious that Fennell doesn’t actually care about Wuthering Heights’s themes.
“She simply desires to make a tortured lovers drama with a reputation that’ll put butts in seats. As although her final two films didn’t make that shallowness apparent already.”
The British writer and director won an Oscar for her breakthrough film Promising Young Woman in 2021, and scored a big hit last year with Saltburn, in which Elordi played the son of a rich and dysfunctional stately home-dwelling family.
Robbie produced both of those films, but Wuthering Heights will be the first Fennell film she has acted in.
The actress is presently pregnant. Variety and Deadline reported that the brand new movie will begin capturing in the UK subsequent yr.
Little is known about how Fennell plans to adapt the 1847 story of turbulent and tragic romance.
She announced the film in July with a gothic illustration depicting two skeletons alongside a line from Heathcliff from the book: “Be with me at all times, take any type, drive me mad.”
“Looking ahead to their Yorkshire accents,” joked writer Lisa Holdsworth in regards to the two stars.
Not everyone was completely down on the idea. “Praying for an additional pristine spherical of excessive camp melodrama trash from Fennell,” wrote film critic Scott Clark.
In the book, Heathcliff was found starving and homeless as a child on the streets of Liverpool and adopted by the Earnshaw family.
His ancestry is ambiguous, and he is described in the book as “a dark-skinned gipsy” and “a bit Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway”. Lascar is an old term for an East Indian sailor.
Heathcliff and Catherine become embroiled in an impassioned and turbulent obsession, which leads to a web of unhealthy relationships and tragedy.
While some see Heathcliff as the brooding romantic hero, he is also violent, abusive and manipulative.
The novel has been adapted for the screen numerous times.
The last film came out in 2011 and was made by director Andrea Arnold, starring Skins actress Kaya Scodelario as Catherine and James Howson as Heathcliff.
Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes appeared in a 1992 version.
On TV, in 2009, ITV forged Tom Hardy as Heathcliff and Charlotte Riley as his doomed love curiosity.
