Wuthering Heights: Emerald Fennell casts Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in adaptation of Emily Bronte novel

Can you already hear it? “Heeaaaaathcliffe, it’s me, your Cathyyyyyy, I’ve come home, I’m so cold, let me in your window”.

Now that Kate Bush is stuck in your head, and will be all day, you’re primed to hear the news.

Emerald Fennell is adapting Emily Bronte’s classic and she’s cast Australians Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in the lead roles.

Imagine the swooning, the anguish and the melodrama of Bronte’s gothic romance in the hands of a filmmaker who, if nothing else, certainly knows how to ramp up the theatre.

British filmmaker Fennell won an Oscar for the screenplay for her debut feature Promising Young Woman and also made Saltburn as well as the second season of Killing Eve – all projects that never underplayed the drama.

Robbie will play Catherine, the daughter of the landed gentry Earnshaw family. Elordi will portray Heathcliffe, the adopted son of the Earnshaws who is taken in when he is a child. But he is treated as lower status when the patriarch who adopted him dies.

A central part of Bronte’s novel is Heathcliffe and Catherine’s love story. But she decides to marry someone else, a decision that has ramifications on not just their fates but those of the next generation.

Robbie will also produce the film through her LuckyChap company. Wuthering Heights marks the third collaboration between LuckyChap and Fennell, having also worked on Promising Young Woman and Saltburn together, but it’s the first time Robbie has appeared on screen for the writer and director.

Deadline reported the production will film in the UK in 2025.

Robbie most recently appeared onscreen in Barbie, directed by Greta Gerwig, which grossed $US1.44 billion at the global box office. She will next be seen in A Big Bold Beautiful Journey alongside Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith and Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

Elordi has had a barnstorming couple of years with high-profile roles in Saltburn and Priscilla. He is in the upcoming Paul Schrader movie Oh, Canada, and Swift Horses alongside Daisy Edgar-Jones and Will Poulter.

He wrapped production on Australian historical miniseries The Narrow Road to the Deep North, adapted from a Richard Flanagan book, and is filming Guillermo del Toro’s version of Frankenstein, in which Elordi plays Frankenstein’s monster.

Wuthering Heights was published in 1847 but a second 1850 edition was edited by Bronte’s sister Charlotte after Emily’s death.

The earliest adaptation of the story was a 1920 film version but one of the best known was the 1939 William Wyler film starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.

More recently, there was a 1992 adaptation starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche while Tom Hardy appeared in a 2009 two-part TV series.

Of course, a version of Wuthering Heights that has permeated pop culture is Kate Bush’s 1978 song that has spawned the flashmob movement “Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever”, an annual event around the world that sees fans dress up and recreate Bush’s iconic choreography from the second version of her video clip.

Here is a video from this year’s Melbourne event.