Emerald Fennell set to direct Wuthering Heights movie

Emerald Fennell will be directing a movie adaptation of ‘Wuthering Heights’.

The 38-year-old filmmaker - who became a household name after releasing ‘Saltburn’ last year - took to X to announce she will be helming a film based on the classic Gothic romance by Emily Brontë.

In a post to the social media platform, Fennell shared a graphic which reads: “Be with me always – Take any form – Drive me mad.”

Published by Brontë under the pseudonym Ellis Bell in 1847, the novel tells the tragic love story of Heathcliff - an orphan adopted by farmer Mr. Earnshaw - and the gentleman’s daughter Catherine in the Yorkshire Moors, England.

Industry insiders told Deadline the director will be working with MRC on the project, the studio ‘The Crown’ actress had previously collaborated with on ‘Saltburn’.

Reflecting on her award-winning psychological thriller - which starred Barry Keoghan and Jacob Elordi - the filmmaker revealed she chose to capitalise on the disturbing tone in the picture because she believed movies should make audiences “shift in their seats”.

Fennell told Deadline's Breaking Baz column: “If you’re aiming to make something that sounds true and even if it’s metaphorical and kind of Gothic, and there’s something that makes people shift in their seats, it’s because we’re feeling something that maybe we shouldn’t. That maybe we don’t want to interrogate.

“And so there’s no point in being provocative for the sake of it – but if you’re kind of prodding at something uncomfortable, that’s what movies are for.

“I stick my finger in.”

Despite this, the director emphasised she also wants her work to make people “excited”.

She explained: “The thing is that we just always want to make things that are fun, that push buttons and that make people excited. And make people want to watch it again.

“You want to make something that everyone talks about afterwards.”

She continued: “And everyone has a slightly different impression of what happened. The dance you’re always doing as a filmmaker is around how much you let people fill in the gaps. And how much do you show? And it’s really ,really lovely to hear so many people feeling so many different ways about what they just saw, and that’s just thrilling.”