Saltburn’s Emerald Fennell to Direct New Adaptation of Classic Novel

Emerald Fennell teases a new Wuthering Heights adaptation.

Back in 2021, Emerald Fennell won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Promising Young Woman, and she made waves again last year after her second feature film, Saltburn, became a divisive awards season contender. Fennell, who is also an actor known for playing Camilla Parker Bowles in The Crown and Midge in Barbie, is currently eying her next project. The director took to Twitter yesterday to reveal she will be directing an adaptation of the classic Gothic romance, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. 

Fennell shared cover artwork by Katie Buckley that teases a new Wuthering Heights adaptation with, “A film by Emerald Fennell” at the bottom. According to Deadline, the project will reunite Fennell with studio MRC after collaborating on Saltburn. However, it is currently unclear who will distribute the project. There also hasn’t been any casting news. The tagline in the shared artwork reads, “Be With Me Always. Take Any Form. Drive Me Mad.” You can check out the image in the post below:

pic.twitter.com/NZXNYAm1wZ

— Emerald Fennell (@emeraldfennell) July 12, 2024

Emerald Fennell Talks Saltburn:

In Saltburn, Struggling to find his place at Oxford University, Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) finds himself drawn into the world of the charming and aristocratic Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), who invites him to Saltburn, his eccentric family’s sprawling estate, for a summer never to be forgotten. The ensemble cast also includes Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Alison Oliver, Archie Madekwe, Carey Mulligan, Paul Rhys, Lolly Adefope, Ewan Mitchell, and Reece Shearsmith.

“My favorite thing in general is sympathy for the devil,” Fennell said of the film in an interview with Vanity Fair. “The sorts of people that we can’t stand, the sorts of people who are abhorrent—if we can love them, if we can fall in love with these people, if we can understand why this is so alluring, in spite of its palpable cruelty and unfairness and sort of strangeness, if we all want to be there too, I think that’s just such an interesting dynamic.”

“He’s just so compelling. He’s got a kind of sex appeal and a vulnerability and a physical presence and a sort of darkness, or he can at least communicate these things in a way that is very rare,” Fennell added of Keoghan. “[We were] holding hands and jumping off a cliff, because a lot of the time we were looking to make something that is sort of visceral and surprising and dark and sexy, and that takes a lot of commitment.”

Stay tuned for more updates about Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights.