The idea has lit up group chats and headline tickers alike: Emerald Fennell taking on Emily Brontë. A potential Hurlevent adaptation collides with the filmmaker behind Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, and the pairing instantly raises the stakes. Gothic passion meets razor sharp storytelling, that is the hook readers clicked for.
Context lands fast. “Wuthering Heights” was published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, the only novel by Emily Brontë. It follows two entwined generations on the Yorkshire moors through a frame narrator device that keeps truth shifting. Add Emerald Fennell, Oscar winner in 2021 for Best Original Screenplay, and curiosity spikes for good reason.
Wuthering Heights, or Hurlevent, in focus: the story that still tests adapters
The novel’s engine is simple to state and hard to stage. Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff are bound by class, obsession and revenge, and those choices echo into the lives of Cathy Linton, Linton Heathcliff and Hareton Earnshaw. The book runs across 34 chapters, moving between memories told by Nelly Dean to Mr. Lockwood and the present tense of a haunted household.
The tone is elemental. Wind, mud, isolation, sudden bursts of tenderness and cruelty. One sentence still frames the dilemma that every version must handle: “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” Film and television often narrow that scope. The 1939 movie directed by William Wyler focused on the first generation and starred Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. The 1992 feature with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche restored more of the later chapters. Andrea Arnold’s 2011 interpretation leaned into texture and physicality with Kaya Scodelario and James Howson.
That is the first puzzle. Which timeline, which narrator, which house. The second puzzle is tone. Is this a romance or a cycle of abuse. Many adaptations have answered by softening the second generation or by treating the frame narrator as a footnote. The book resists that shortcut.
Emerald Fennell: a track record that explains the surge of interest
Emerald Fennell has built a career on stories where desire, status and danger share the same room. “Promising Young Woman” premiered in 2020 and recieved the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2021. “Saltburn” arrived in 2023 and turned a country estate into a pressure cooker of class and obsession. Before that, Fennell served as head writer on “Killing Eve” season 2 in 2019, steering a cat and mouse story that never blinked.
These facts matter for Hurlevent. Brontë’s structure invites a modern eye on power, gender and social code, while keeping the text’s rawness. Fennell’s work has repeatedly balanced pop clarity with moral ambiguity. Viewers remember sharp framing, a sense of place used as character, and dialogue that hides knives in velvet. Those tools meet the Yorkshire moors with obvious friction.
There is also a practical skill set. Adapting across time jumps. Writing unreliable conversations that still propel plot. Sculpting antiheroes who do not get redeemed by a final speech. All of that matches the demands of “Wuthering Heights”, which pivots on who speaks, who is believed and how memory reorders pain.
Adaptation playbook: choices that would shape a new Hurlevent on screen
Start with scope. Do you keep Lockwood and Nelly as anchors, or step inside Heathcliff and Catherine from scene one. The 1939 feature cut the second generation entirely, which tightened focus but erased the novel’s cycle of consequence. The 1992 film preserved more plot but wrestled with momentum in the final third. Limiting the story to one generation creates pace. Keeping both generations protects the book’s architecture.
Now tone. Romantic iconography can blur into beautified violence if the point of view is not precise. A clear solution is to tie every moment of tenderness to costs paid later by the next generation. When Cathy Linton and Hareton begin to heal, the text earns light after long shadow. A screen version must connect those dots without speeches.
Casting and setting define credibility. Heathcliff’s outsider status has often been flattened. Andrea Arnold opened space by centering rough textures and by letting the landscape bruise the characters. Period detail helps, but hierarchy and language do more. The moors do not need scenic postcards. They need weather that drives choices.
Format answers problems that two hour films keep inheriting. A limited series with six to eight episodes could follow both generations without discarding the frame device, one episode grounding in Lockwood and Nelly, the next two for Catherine and Heathcliff, the final chapters for redemption that the book earns grudgingly. Rights are clear. The novel sits in the public domain, which means stylistic freedom lives next to fidelity to names and places.
What would make a new Hurlevent land in the present is not a twist, but a simple alignment. Perspective held steady, both generations intact, and a soundscape that lets breath and wind interrupt polite conversation. That is the missing piece many viewers look for when they hear those two names in the same sentence, Emerald Fennell and Emily Brontë.