A new adaptation of the so-called "greatest love story of all time," "Wuthering Heights," is coming to the big screen this Valentine's Day.

The new movie features an all-star lineup, headed by Margot Robbie as leading lady, Catherine, and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff.

Directed by Emerald Fennell, the trailer released last week promises a cinematic, broody take on Emily Bronte's 1847 Gothic novel of the same name.

Set in the West Yorkshire moors, the trailer hints at eroticism while conjuring the feeling of English walls suffering from rising damp and pained hearts aching from a doomed love, with enough anguish to inspire any emo kid. The sheer amount of rain, fog and pained glances in the trailer suggests things won't end well for the star-crossed lovers.

The trailer also features a new song, "Chains of Love," by pop star Charli XCX who has written the film's soundtrack — the first album after her global hit, "Brat."

For anyone who hasn't read the novel and might only have the 1978 Kate Bush song "Wuthering Heights" as their main reference, the basic plot is as follows: Heathcliff is an orphan from Liverpool who is described "a dark-skinned gypsy" — a term which in the context of 19-century Britain, implied foreignness or racial difference. He is immediately set apart from the fair-skinned Earnshaw family who takes him in. He forms a bond with Catherine, who eventually shuns him by marrying the wealthy Edgar Linton to improve her social status.

Heathcliff's love turns into revenge and their toxic bond destroys the lovers' families for generations to come. Heathcliff exhibits a possessive love for Catherine, while using threats, isolation and humiliation to dominate everyone around him.

How 'Wuthering Heights' became so popular

Bronte died at age 30, shortly after the book, her only novel, was published. It received scathing reviews, shocking readers and critics alike.

But after her death, the book's reputation began to change, with authors such as Virginia Woolf contributing to establishing Bronte's work as a masterpiece of English literature.

The story has continued to resonate with audiences over the years. It has led to the creation of at least 14 major film adaptations, as well as TV series, theater pieces and even a Bollywood movie.

So why does the tale still fascinate audiences today? One reason may be that voyeurism hasn't lost its allure. 

"It links those tropes of romance and of an unhappy ending with that sort of level of aggression and violence that the novel is quite explicit about and is still shocking by today's standards. That voyeurism carries through the ages," explained Caroline Koegler, English literature professor at the Free University of Berlin.

Bronte, said Koegler, frames violence as both "horrifying and thrilling at the same time."

Overlooked issue of racism

But there's a more problematic aspect of the novel that goes beyond the typically highlighted theme of social class. Heathcliff, who Koegler describes as "ambiguously not white," is made into a monster. This was a product of the colonial context in which the book is written and, unfortunately, part of what made the story interesting at the time, Koegler explained.

"In the beginning, we are sort of encouraged a little bit to sympathize with Heathcliff, who has been mistreated by his siblings, but then that is left to the side, and for a large part of the plot, he is just this tormentor, aggressor of white people.

"My reading, and the reading of a lot of other people, is also that the novel links that violence and aggression with a racialized subject, which is something that still carries weight today — we're still dealing with a society that is invested in othering marginalized groups and depicting them as dangerous or aggressive, when actually they are on the receiving end."

Playing on fears

Gothic novels played on themes of fear, including fear of "the other," whether a monster (supernatural themes were common in the Gothic oeuvre) or human.

In the famous novel of Bronte's sister Charlotte, "Jane Eyre," there's also a racialized character, Bertha, who is repeatedly blamed for things that go wrong, reflecting typical Victorian attitudes.

When "Wuthering Heights" was published in 1847 in Britain, slavery had been illegal for a little over a decade.

In the US, meanwhile, slavery was still legal and many British people were still economically linked to slavery through trade, cotton and finance.

"Wuthering Heights," said Koegler, brings the fear of role reversal "back to haunt the white colonizing nation in a rural area." It was meant to inspire fear that one day "roles might be reversed and there might be someone like Heathcliff acting as a would-be plantation owner who tortures and abuses those who depend on him."

Film adaptations, she said, are left with the conflict of how to be faithful to the novel "without replicating that quite questionable dynamic of having a racialized subject to blame for everything."

For this and other reasons, the novel has been described by directors as notoriously difficult to adapt, with some filmmakers calling it borderline unfilmable.

Even Peter Kosminsky, the director of a 1992 movie version, later admitted he regretted making it, calling it "a truly terrible adaptation."

The 2011 movie by Andrea Arnold, however, brought race to the forefront, casting a Black actor in the role of Heathcliff and showing a more human side of him than in Bronte's novel.

Fennell's pick of stars has already fueled debates about how faithful the 2026 movie will be to the book. Margot Robbie, in her mid-30s, is seen as too old to portray the novel's teenage Catherine, while Jacob Elordi doesn't appear to embody Heathcliff's ambiguous ethnicity. 

Earlier this year, the filmmaker's casting director, Kharmel Cochrane, defended the choices, saying there was "no need to be accurate" as the source material is "just a book." Purists might disagree.

Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier