In Wuthering Heights, longing once moved like weather, shaping ruin and devotion in equal measure. Now that same storm circles cinema halls. Jacob Elordi has stepped into the gale with brooding stillness, while Emerald Fennell might have just reshaped gothic ache through a modern lens.

As it happens, Emily Brontë's immortal lovers are not alone in climbing summits again. Their newest interpreters seem to have risen alongside them. 

With February 13 well out of the way, Jacob Elordi and Emerald Fennell have wuthered the heights like never before. 

Emerald Fennell's 2026 adaptation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights has gathered $26.2 million worldwide in its early theatrical run. Its opening weekend receipts have reached $11 million, as per several outlets, and despite landing below industry forecasts, it has established the largest debut either its star, Jacob Elordi, or Fennell has experienced. While the film’s atmospheric pull and literary prestige drew an audience, Fennell's tempestuous twists seem to have retained it beyond its premiere frame of February 13, 2026. 

Jacob Elordi’s previous screen venture, Frankenstein, unfolded primarily through streaming corridors rather than theatrical circuits. Despite surpassing $34.8 million opening-day views, its digital reach could not really rival theatrical revenue. On the other hand, Fennell’s earlier directorial efforts reflect smaller financial footprints.

Saltburn had earned just above $322,000, while Promising Young Woman secured about $719,305 in their openings. The Brontë adaptation, therefore, stands as, even her, most commercially commanding convergence yet. 

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The revenues, however, might hide the slight misstep that seems to have been taken in Wuthering Heights. 

Critical response to Wuthering Heights arrives as restless as the Yorkshire winds that inspired it. Reviewers have commended Emerald Fennell’s audacity in heightening the novel’s anguish into something more sensorially volatile. However, violence, longing, and psychological fracture remained on the surface with just as much intensity.

Jacob Elordi’s restrained ferocity, on the one hand, has earned particular notice from many. The divide, however, mirrors the novel’s own history of unsettling, polarizing power. 

What emerges is less a simple adaptation than a career crest for both Jacob Elordi and Emerald Fennell. Their box office ascent does confirm the audience's appetite for literary reinvention shaped through contemporary lenses. For Elordi and Fennell, the film marks not only a culmination but an elevation, a windswept vantage point from which future artistic risks now appear not only possible but inevitable.

Emerald Fennell’s 'Wuthering Heights' Gets Solid 71% Rotten Tomatoes Rating

What do you think of Wuthering Heights being Jacob Elordi and Emerald Fennell's best yet? Let us know in the comments.