Latest news with #Heathcliff
Courier-Mail
10-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Courier-Mail
‘Aggressively provocative': Test screener for Margot Robbie's ‘Wuthering Heights' film gets mixed reviews
Don't miss out on the headlines from Upcoming Movies. Followed categories will be added to My News. Wuthering Heights devotees are in for a rude shock, it seems. The beloved 1800s novel written by Emily Brontë is yet again being adapted for the screen, with Australian actress Margot Robbie and fellow Aussie Jacob Elordi in the lead roles of Catherine and Heathcliff. Directed by Saltburn filmmaker Emerald Fennell, the upcoming feature film has already copped significant controversy after photos emerged from the set earlier this year, with many taking issue with Robbie's age, her costume and styling, and even with her face looking too 'modern' for a story set in the late 1700s. Now, a test screener hosted in Dallas, Texas, is said to have generated a deeply mixed reaction among viewers, described as 'aggressively provocative' and 'tonally abrasive'. Never miss the latest entertainment news from Australia and around the world — download the app direct to your phone. Margot Robbie pictured on set of 'Wuthering Heights' in the UK in March. Picture: BACKGRID According to movie website World of Reel, 'There's hypersexualised imagery — far more explicit than any previous adaptation of this material.' The outlet further claims, 'The film opens with a public [redacted] that quickly descends into grotesque absurdity, as the condemned man ejaculates mid-execution, sending the onlooking crowd into a kind of orgiastic frenzy. A nun even fondles the corpse's visible erection. 'Later, a woman is strapped into a horse's reins for a BDSM-tinged encounter. There are several masturbation scenes shot in that now-signature Fennell style — intimate, clinical, and purposefully discomforting.' The publication cites an attendee saying Robbie and Elordi have 'great chemistry', but described the characters as 'unlikeable'. Australian actor Jacob Elordi plays Heathcliff in the film. Picture:It's not usual for reviews to emerge from highly-confidential test screenings, which are traditionally held by production companies to gauge audience reaction prior to the film's completion and ultimate release. Production on Wuthering Heights, which took place in the UK, officially wrapped in April. And a warning, some story spoilers below. The book – considered one of the most famous pieces literature ever written – follows the doomed romance between Catherine and Heathcliff, whose passionate love story is marred by societal constraints. Juliette Binoche alongside Ralph Fiennes in the 1992 version of Wuthering Heights. Forgotten Film That Launched Margot Robbie's Career Video Player is loading. Play Video This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. 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This modal can be closed by pressing the Escape key or activating the close button. 01:28 SUBSCRIBER ONLY Forgotten Film That Launched Margot Robbie's Career more more began when she was cast in two films in the late 2000s before she ever set foot in Ramsay St. Take a look at where Margot's career...... ... more Amid the backlash when Robbie – a three-time Oscar nominee – was cast, many took issue with the actress' age. At 35, the Queensland-born star is some 16 years older than Catherine. While it's certainly not uncommon for mature actors to portray younger characters, much of the tragedy of the novel lies in the premature nature of Catherine's death during childbirth, as Heathcliff lives on tormented to have lost her before they have a chance to be together. Others also felt Robbie didn't quite capture a 17th-century woman, with one critic claiming she looks 'straight out of Sephora'. Previous adaptations saw actress Merle Oberon, then in her late twenties, star alongside Laurence Olivier in a 1939 movie, as well as Juliette Binoche, also in her twenties, alongside Ralph Fiennes in the 1992 version. Actress Kaya Scodelario was 19 when she played Cathy in a 2011 film adaptation, alongside James Howson as Heathcliff. With a flurry of adaptations having already been made, it's perhaps unsurprising Fennell is looking to infuse some shock factor. Warner Bros is distributing the film, with a planned February 2026 cinema release. Originally published as 'Aggressively provocative': Test screener for Margot Robbie's 'Wuthering Heights' film cops mixed reviews
Metro
08-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Controversial book adaptation shocks viewers with BDSM sex
Emerald Fennell's controversial adaptation of Wuthering Heights has been met with shock and labelled 'aggressively provocative' by initial audiences. Fennell's 2023 dark comedy Saltburn, starring Barry Keoghan and Jacob Elordi, caused quite the stir when it was released a couple of years ago. The film featured darkly erotic scenes and was praised for its severe sexual content and nudity, as well as its frequent depiction of violence and gore. Because of this huge success, the announcement that Fennell would be directing an adaptation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights was met with excitement – and concern from literary fans. The casting of Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie respectively as Heathcliff and Cathy, raised major eyebrows, and now it's been reported that an initial first screening of the unfinished film has left many shocked by the content of the period piece. World of Reel revealed that the adaptation included -among other shocking scenes – a nun fondling a corpse, BDSM, and sexualised slugs and egg yolks. Attendees have reported that the film includes 'hyper-sexualised imagery' with a 'grotesque' scene that sees a public hanging end with the condemned man ejaculating during the execution. This is followed up with some blasphemous necrophia from a nun who 'fondles the corpse's visible erection'. There are 'several masturbation scenes' that are 'purposefully discomforting' and a 'BDSM-tinged encounter' involving a woman being strapped into some horse reins. There are also some rather sexy textures, including 'egg yolks running through fingers', sliding slugs, and a bit of dirty dough kneading. Test screenings can often lead to major edits to the film, and with Fennell's film not set to be released until February 2026, who knows if any of this will make it to the final cut! The film has faced criticism for casting Elordi, yet another white actor to play Heathcliff, a famously non-white role that was written by Brontë. On one page of the original novel, Heathcliff is described as a 'dark-skinned gipsy in aspect', while another refers to his 'dusky fingers'. Characters debate his appearance to be of a 'Lascar' – a dated description meaning a sailor from India or Southeast Asia – or 'an American or Spanish castaway'. Casting director Kharmel Cochrane worked on the film and is one of the biggest names in her field in the UK, having previously worked on the likes of Nosferatu, Saltburn, Bob Marley: One Love. While at the Sands International Film Festival of St Andrews, she told Metro that she is very much aware of the abuse directed at her after her casting choices for the film. 'I have really had to hold back on Instagram after a glass of wine, because I think someone was like, 'The casting director should be shot',' she said. More Trending 'There's definitely going to be some English Lit fans that are not going to be happy.' She then added: 'Wait until you see the set design, because it's even more shocking. And there may or may not be a dog collar in it.' 'You can read anything into a book and make it your interpretation. And it's really easy to sit online and say things, but just wait until you've watched it, and then you can say – maybe not that I deserve to be shot – but you can say what you want!' Cochrane suggests. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Michael Bay leaves Will Smith Netflix film over 'creative differences' MORE: I know Freakier Friday is an unnecessary sequel – but it makes good choices MORE: Scarlett Johansson's 'terrible' English accent in new film leaves fans unimpressed
Buzz Feed
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
Readers Reveal Most Overrated Classic Books
When I turned twenty, I set a personal reading goal to read 100 classics by the time I turned thirty. I admit, I still have twelve books to go within nine I like to think that I am relatively well-versed in classic literature. So when Reddit user villagewitch3000 asked, "What's the worst 'classic' you've ever read?" I immediately had to see if everyone agreed with me about The Scarlet Letter being one of the most tedious slogs known to classic literature. (The consensus is IS!) Even though I wholeheartedly disagree with some of these reviews, I thought they were too interesting not to share. So without further ado... "Wuthering Heights. Jesus. Heathcliff, mate, just leave her alone. " "Pride and Prejudice. Long-winded drivel, neither funny nor romantic, and without even the redeeming quality of a worthwhile message." "The Scarlet Letter. I hate how Hawthorne spoon-feeds his readers symbolism. We get it. The scarlet letter is a symbol for shame." "Gone with the Wind. Scarlett O'Hara acts ridiculous and insufferable throughout the entire novel. She doesn't care who she has to hurt, just as long as she gets her way." "To Kill a Mockingbird. I thought it was so boring and I was really disappointed. I picked it up expecting that the racism aspect of the story would have a bigger role, but instead I had to read through pages and pages of this little girl's boring life." "The Great Gatsby. I can't stand Fitzgerald's writing style." "Rebecca. It's like, bitch, I do not care about your problems. The only person in this entire mansion that I can relate to is the maid that I'm supposed to hate." "This will probably get some Catcher in the Rye. I honestly could not connect with Holden Caulfield and found him to be somewhat of a whiny, self-indulgent ne'er-do-well." "Crime and Punishment. I just wanted to punch the main character in the face over and over again. And it honestly had zero to do with the fact that he was a murderer. I just hated his personality." "Lolita, hands down. Gross, perverted, and I dreaded picking it back up every time I did. " "Frankenstein. I think my problem was that I was expecting the book to be really different from what it was." "The Alchemist. Ugh. What utter tripe. If this book changed your life, then you must have had a truly horrific life up to that point." "Les Misérables. Not only is it very long, it has seemingly interminable stretches of boredom." "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It might've been funny or clever when I was 14 and loved Monty Python and thought absurdist British humour was the height of it was awful as an adult." "Anything Tolkien. Reading the man's writing is like trying to ingest a pack of broken light bulbs." "Heart of Darkness is so incredibly boring. I had to read it for three separate classes, and I really tried to like it each time, but I can't stand that book. " "Don Don Quixote." "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Talking about the mechanics of the boat is not fun." "Ulysses. That was work." "Atlas Shrugged. 🙄😴😴😴😴😴" "Moby Dick is one of the most inconsistent books I've ever read. It starts out as a first-person narrative by Ishmael, occasionally interrupted by lengthy speeches and occasional chapters on the anatomy of the sperm whale, and by the end, it shifts to the third person. Then there is maybe a paragraph tacked onto the very end when Melville realizes this was Ishmael's story, so he kinda reverts back to the first person to explain how he could have survived to tell the tale." "The Picture of Dorian Gray. Udder nonsense dressed in off-putting, overly flowery dribble." "Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck just REALLY likes describing scenery, and sometimes I'm just not down to read through ten pages about hills. " "The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. The great depression... pretty much sums how I felt reading it." "One Hundred Years of Solitude. I recall reading it, and I ended up saying, 'That was it? What was all the fuss about?'" "Pretty much anything by Charles Dickens. He came from a time when authors were paid by installment, and it shows." "Brave New World. Didn't find it compelling at all. 1984 on the other hand scared the shit out of me." "The Turn of the Screw. It is supposed to be ambiguous, but I really only see the governess as a loon. " "The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer seems to think the only things that are funny are farts." "I read Slaughterhouse-Five and I don't remember a damn thing about it. " "I hated The Giver. The ending was just deus ex machina wish fulfillment. " "Walden was my 'I can't stand this' book. It almost destroyed my love of reading." "I get why Uncle Tom's Cabin is important, but hoooo boy, that book is a hot mess. Most of the classics I've slogged through are at least objectively well written, but not this one. " "Vanity Fair. I've read it about four times, and I still can't keep up with who is who and what the main character's motive is." "The Yellow Wallpaper. Yeah, I get it. Patriarchy bad. " "The Count of Monte Cristo. It builds up to this lacklustre ending that could've happened chapters ago. I felt I would have been better off watching a Hollywood adaptation loosely based on the original novel." "The Bell Jar. Took it from my university read it." "Toni Morrison's Beloved. Starts off boring, progresses slowly, and tries to be meaningful in places, but it just felt contrived. Then out of nowhere, a supernatural ending that would be more at home in a Sci-fi original movie." Since The Great Gatsby is my favourite book of all time, I am personally offended by those who tell me that Fitzgerald is nothing special. I want to scream, "You try writing such colourful and poetic prose!" So please don't let me down in the comments. Instead, in the comments, tell me the classic literature titles that you could barely get through, and which of the above titles are WRONG to be listed as a "bad classic." And make sure you follow BuzzFeed Canada on TikTok and Instagram for more!
Los Angeles Times
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Laguna Art Museum exhibit centers on ‘Wuthering Heights' character Heathcliff
There's vibrant color, engaging imagery and a strong sense of subversiveness. And at the center of Carole Caroompas' posthumous exhibit at Laguna Art Museum is Heathcliff. But this is no 'Wuthering Heights.' 'The show has this Heathcliff series and there's 10 works in the series and all 10 of them are included in the show,' said Rochelle Steiner, guest curator at Laguna Art Museum who curated 'Carole Caroompas: Heathcliff and the Femme Fatale Go on Tour,' which runs through July 13. 'It's the first time that the series has been shown completely, which is very exciting,' Steiner said. 'She made them between 1997 and 2001. This work was inspired [in part] by her interest in 'Wuthering Heights,' that's the Heathcliff reference.' Caroompas, who spent her early life in Newport Beach and attended Cal State Fullerton before moving to Los Angeles, died at age 76 in 2022. With the help of her estate, the museum is showing the exhibit fully, with all 10 pieces. She was an artist inspired by pop culture and literature, feminism, gender and relationships. 'She got her MFA at USC and then after she graduated, she kind of found her way into the artist community of L.A.,' Steiner said. 'She was a painter. Her paintings are quite interesting in terms of the way she mixes materials and sources and references. One of the things that she was very inspired by was music. So in this particular series, you see a lot of references to musicians. But she also was very interested in what she called 'found embroidery,' which is basically like everything from napkins to tablecloths to things that had embroidered edges. And those were incorporated into her paintings as well.' Steiner said there's a mix of painted, collaged and assembled works in Caroompas' art. 'Rough and also very refined,' she said of the artist's works. 'Extremely colorful and extremely painted … mashed together. It's quite an interesting aesthetic. Some of the imagery is taken from album covers or inspired by album covers or movies or TV shows or even postcards that she found. She was quite a kind of visual collector and then that got assembled into her artworks.' 'Queen of the Countryside' in the Heathcliff series is just one example. It uses acrylic paint and found embroidery on canvas over panel that's nearly 8-feet tall, and has two sections. In one section, Heathcliff is different male rock stars — John Doe of LA punk band X and Joe Strummer of the Clash. They are with Exene Cervenka of X and Catherine Earnshaw, the fictional female lead character of 'Wuthering Heights.' 'She was really … on the one hand, very grounded in art and idea and literature and the classics and the movies and the films,' Steiner said. 'And on the other hand, she was incredibly fantastical in terms of her imagination and amalgamation of imagery.' The works in the series range widely in size — from a couple of feet up to 8 feet. 'There's really a sense of scale,' Steiner said. Steiner also included some of the artist's source material. 'For example, we found a few of the original postcards that she used, like images of kids or singers or others,' Steiner said. 'I put those in the between so we can see what she was drawing from.' Steiner also included Caroompas' own copy of 'Wuthering Heights' as part of the exhibit. The classic novel was written by English author Emily Bronte and published in 1847. 'So she wasn't just kind of superficially interested in 'Wuthering Heights,'' Steiner said. 'She read it and read it many times and I reproduced a page from it. She marked on almost every page, like different passages, and she took notes, and she, you know, really studied it.' At the heart of the Heathcliff series is relationships. 'She definitely was a feminist,' Steiner said. 'On the one hand very much focused on relationships between men and women, and that comes out in many of the works [in Heathcliff]. … What is the relationship or structure of a relationship between men and women? But she was very interested in kind of deconstructing power dynamics and thinking about equality and inequality.' Los Angeles artist Tom Knechtel said he first met Caroompas when she was invited to CalArts as a visiting artist in 1975, when he was in his second year of graduate school there. 'Carole's inspirations were diverse: literature, film, rock music, the history of art, popular culture and advertising,' Knechtel said. 'Before each body of work, she did extensive research — she often came to my house to raid my library. … The materials that she brought back from these investigations were not presented in a simple, straightforward fashion but were woven into a complex tapestry of conflicting images that create a conversation in front of the viewer.' Artist Cliff Benjamin, who lives in Hawaii, is in charge of Caroompas' estate. 'I knew Carole since 1985, until the day she died,' he said. 'She and I were really good friends for many decades.' He said she was a professor at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles for more than 30 years. 'It was a huge influence on … hundreds and hundreds of art students,' he said. Benjamin said she was part of the generation that lived through civil rights, women's and anti-war movements. 'She was part of that '60s generation that went through all of those different movements and was very much about doing the right thing,' he said. The Laguna Art Museum is located at 307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach. For more information and to order tickets, visit
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Wuthering Heights' Casting Director Defends Margot Robbie & Jacob Elordi Controversy: "It's Just A Book"
English author Emily Brontë published Wuthering Heights in November 1847, and the intense novel remains a cultural phenomenon over 177 years later. It's been adapted numerous times across film, TV, radio, and even music, but now, the latest re-imagination of Brontë's work has sparked some controversy. Wuthering Heights, a movie directed by Emerald Fennell and inspired by Brontë's iconic novel, is set to debut in early 2026. However, many have taken issue with the leading roles being given to Margot Robbie, best known for her performances in Barbie and The Wolf of Wall Street, and the Priscilla star Jacob Elordi. Brontë's Wuthering Heights takes place in the late 18th century in remote Yorkshire and centers on the relationship between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, who is an orphan. In the book, Heathcliff is also portrayed as having dark skin, hair, and eyes, which is why readers suspected he was of Roman or "Gypsy" descent. This would help explain the prejudice that Heathcliff faces throughout the story. So, critics have suggested that Jacob Elordi wasn't the right choice to depict Heathcliff, given his ethnicity. Moreover, he and Margot Robbie, who are 27 and 34 years old, respectively, have both come under fire due to their ages, since the main characters are in their early twenties for most of the book. Casting director Kharmel Cochrane responded to the backlash at the Sands film festival in Scotland, claiming there was "no need to be accurate" since the material inspiring Emerald Fennell's newest film adaptation is "just a book," according to Deadline. This statement seemingly struck a nerve with numerous literary lovers, as a recent Reddit thread regarding Kharmel's response sparked a lot of outrage and called into question the respect Brontë's novel was being afforded. "It sounds like she [Kharmel] has lots of respect for the material and isn't just doing it for money," sarcastically commented one Redditor. "What was the point of adapting it if they weren't gonna actually adapt it accurately?" asked another, "They'll probably change entire plot points to make it unrecognizable." "The casting decision is one thing, but that dismissive attitude makes me angry. I won't be watching, considering it's 'just a film,'" added a third. Now, Emerald Fennell's adaptation of Wuthering Heights isn't the first to ignore character traits laid out by Brontë in the original book. In fact, Heathcliff has previously been played by actors such as Ralph Fiennes, Tom Hardy, and Timothy Dalton. Still, the rest of Kharmel's remarks from the Sands film festival have left a sour taste in many people's mouths. "There was one Instagram comment that said the casting director should be shot. But just wait until you see it, and then you can decide whether you want to shoot me or not. But you really don't need to be accurate. It's just a book. That is not based on real life. It's all art," she stated. "There's definitely going to be some English Lit fans that are not going to be happy. Wait until you see the set design, because that is even more shocking. And there may or may not be a dog collar in it." According to , the film will be released on February 13, 2026. How well it's received by audiences in the wake of such casting controversy remains to be seen. Looking for more , , and news? Follow us on so you never miss a thing!
