Cover Each generation returns to ‘Wuthering Heights’, convinced it will finally get them right, only to discover that the novel refuses emotional safety. Charlotte Riley and Tom Hardy play Catherine and Heathcliff in the 2009 BBC miniseries (Photo: IMDB)
Each generation returns to ‘Wuthering Heights’, convinced it will finally get them right, only to discover that the novel refuses emotional safety. Charlotte Riley and Tom Hardy play Catherine and Heathcliff in the 2009 BBC miniseries (Photo: IMDB)
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Every adaptation of Wuthering Heights reveals what its era is afraid of romanticising
Oscar-winning writer and director Emerald Fennell brings Wuthering Heights back to the screen. Released on February 13 and starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, Emily Brontë’s most ferocious novel is once again being positioned as a cultural event rather than a dutiful literary adaptation. The timing feels deliberate. Wuthering Heights isn’t a romance so much as a study in obsession, class resentment and emotional extremity. It is the kind of story that resurfaces whenever culture is reckoning with power, desire and the fine line between passion and pathology. Each generation returns to Heathcliff and Catherine, convinced it will finally get them right, only to discover that the novel refuses easy heroes, tidy morals or emotional safety. That slipperiness is precisely why the story endures—and why filmmakers and showrunners keep risking their reputations on the moors.
Before you buy a ticket for the latest Wuthering Heights adaptation, read about previous attempts to tame this wild novel for the screen.
In case you missed it: 13 book-to-movie adaptations to watch on Netflix
‘Wuthering Heights’ (1939)
Above The version that invented Heathcliff as a romantic icon—and sanitised him just enough to get away with it
William Wyler’s Hollywood classic doesn’t so much adapt Wuthering Heights as refashion it into a tragic love story palatable for studio-era audiences. Laurence Olivier’s Heathcliff is brooding, wounded and unmistakably noble—more Byronic hero than social outcast. Meanwhile, Catherine Earnshaw (Merle Oberon) was equal parts passionate and strong-willed. The film famously abandons the second half of the novel, sparing viewers the generational rot Brontë insisted on. Still, its stark black-and-white moorland imagery and Olivier’s clipped, furious line delivery established the template for every tortured antihero that followed. This is Wuthering Heights as myth, not mess—and for decades, that was enough.
‘Wuthering Heights’ (1970)
Above A colder, harsher take that remembers Heathcliff is supposed to be frightening
Timothy Dalton’s Heathcliff arrives lean, silent and visibly simmering with resentment, closer to Brontë’s description of a man shaped by cruelty rather than romance. Opposite him, Anna Calder-Marshall’s Catherine Earnshaw is notably unsentimental: sharp-tongued, restless and acutely aware of how social rank constricts her choices. Her Catherine doesn’t float between worlds—she calculates, hesitates and then hardens, making her eventual decisions feel less tragic whim than conscious compromise.
This adaptation restores more of the novel’s moral bleakness, especially in how it treats class and humiliation as slow, cumulative violence. Dalton—years before James Bond—plays Heathcliff as a man who never learned how to soften without losing himself. It’s not a cosy watch, but it’s an honest one. The love here doesn’t feel aspirational; it feels corrosive.
‘Hihintayin Kita sa Langit’ (1991)
Above This is proof that ‘Wuthering Heights’ doesn’t need fog or heather to devastate; it only needs two people who love each other badly and a society that gives them no graceful exit
Eddie Romero’s coastal melodrama is Wuthering Heights filtered through sun, salt and Filipino fatalism, relocating Emily Brontë’s moors to the cliffs and beaches of the Philippines. Gabriel (Richard Gomez), the brooding outsider taken in by a wealthy family, is Brontë’s Heathcliff by way of 1990s Filipino masculinity—silent, proud and quietly combustible—while Carmina (Dawn Zulueta) plays his Catherine as a woman split between emotional truth and social expectation. The class divide here is not abstract but tactile: think land ownership, inheritance and the unspoken rules of provincial elite life.
Romero leans into restraint rather than gothic excess, letting long silences and natural landscapes do the emotional heavy lifting. What stands out is how seamlessly the story adapts to Filipino cultural codes, such as debt of gratitude, family obligation and endurance, without sanding down the cruelty at the heart of the romance.
‘Wuthering Heights’ (1992)
Above Operatic, sensual and emotionally unhinged—in other words, exactly right
If you’ve ever believed Wuthering Heights should feel like emotional suffocation, this is your version. Ralph Fiennes’ Heathcliff is feral and vengeful, his tenderness always edged with threat. Juliette Binoche’s Catherine is all impulse and ego, fully aware of her own destructiveness. Director Peter Kosminsky lets the violence—emotional and physical—land without apology, and the film’s muddy textures and howling winds underline how trapped these people are by their own appetites. This is the adaptation that most clearly understands that love, here, is not redemptive. It is contagious.
See more: Margot Robbie’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ style is a masterclass in Gothic romance
‘Wuthering Heights’ (2009)
Above The most psychologically detailed—and unexpectedly intimate—adaptation to date
Given room to breathe, this BBC miniseries leans into emotional accumulation rather than spectacle. Tom Hardy’s Heathcliff is volatile and watchful, less theatrical than internalised, while Charlotte Riley’s Catherine balances cruelty with genuine emotional panic. Their chemistry is unnerving precisely because it feels lived-in rather than heightened. (FYI, the two ended up married after this project.) The miniseries format allows secondary characters—Hindley, Edgar, Nelly—to emerge as co-conspirators in the tragedy. This isn’t about grand gestures; it’s about how small humiliations compound into lifelong damage.
‘Wuthering Heights’ (2011)
Above The raw, mud-under-the-fingernails version that refuses romantic comfort
Andrea Arnold’s adaptation is the most radical—and the most divisive. Casting a Black actor (James Howson) as Heathcliff foregrounds the racial othering only hinted at in the novel, making his outsider status impossible to ignore. Shot in handheld close-ups, with minimal dialogue and relentless natural sound, the film feels almost tactile. Kaya Scodelario’s Catherine is impulsive, physical and often cruel, while Howson’s Heathcliff absorbs brutality until it calcifies. This is Wuthering Heights as environmental trauma—less love story than survival narrative.
‘Wuthering Heights’ (1967)
Above A forgotten television adaptation that quietly nailed the menace (Photo: IMDB)
A forgotten television adaptation that quietly nailed the menace (Photo: IMDB)
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Long overshadowed by later versions, this BBC production offers one of the more quietly unnerving pairings on record. Ian McShane’s Heathcliff is charismatic but erratic, a man whose warmth always feels provisional, as if violence is merely waiting for permission. Angela Scoular’s Catherine is the counterweight: coolly self-possessed, socially alert and acutely aware of how much leverage her desirability affords her. Rather than romantic volatility, Scoular plays Catherine with calculation. Watch how she measures rooms, conversations and men before committing to any emotional display. The production itself is restrained, almost austere, but that minimalism sharpens the cruelty instead of softening it. It’s a version of Wuthering Heights that doesn’t plead for sympathy, only attention. And rewards it with menace that seeps in slowly.
Sasha Lim-Uy Mariposa is a lifestyle journalist who is known for her food writing. Based in Manila, she also covers entertainment and dining, as well as a broad range of topics. She was the former digital editor at Esquire Philippines and was the digital managing editor at Spot.ph, and now writes for the different Tatler Asia markets as a contributing writer for T-Labs.
