Emerald Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ Just Crashed the Boys’ Club of Blockbuster Directors
Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights hasn’t just dragged Emily Brontë’s stormy romance back into the pop‑culture weather report; it has quietly shoved its director into the very small club of the highest‑grossing female filmmakers working today. That milestone lands in the shadow of the 2025 Annenberg Inclusion Initiative report, which found that of the year’s 100 top‑grossing films, only nine were directed by women—a reminder that Fennell’s box office breakthrough is less a triumphal ending than a proof‑of‑concept for what Hollywood still keeps insisting is “too risky.”
Fennell, who blasted onto the scene with Promising Young Woman and followed with the decadently corrosive Saltburn, has now turned to Brontë’s windswept classic with a distinctly modern sensibility. The result is a gothic romance that plays like a prestige drama but performs like a mid‑tier blockbuster—rare air for a female‑directed literary adaptation.
How Wuthering Heights Pushed Emerald Fennell Into the Box Office Elite
According to reporting highlighted by IndieWire, Wuthering Heights has lifted Fennell’s cumulative box office to a level that places her alongside the most commercially successful women behind the camera today. That’s a club historically associated with names like Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman), Anna Boden (Captain Marvel), Jennifer Lee (Frozen), and Greta Gerwig (Barbie).
The timing is pointed. The 2025 Annenberg Inclusion Initiative report found that:
- Only 9 of the top 100 box office films were directed by women.
- Across the 19 years of the study, representation for women directors has remained stubbornly flat, with occasional spikes rather than sustained progress.
- Women of color remain the most underrepresented group, often registering in the low single digits annually.
In nearly two decades of tracking, the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative has repeatedly concluded that “change for women directors is not a trend, but an anomaly driven by a handful of high-profile successes rather than industry-wide reform.”
Fennell’s climb is, by that measure, an anomaly: a filmmaker whose films are recognizably auteur‑driven yet increasingly bankable, smuggling difficult themes into multiplexes that still default to familiar male‑authored spectacle.
A Gothic Classic, Rewired: Fennell’s Take on Wuthering Heights
Culturally, Wuthering Heights has been through almost every imaginable filter: faithful period drama, MTV‑era melodrama, alt‑rock concept album, you name it. Fennell’s version leans into the story’s toxicity, refusing to romanticize Heathcliff and Catherine as misunderstood lovers and instead framing them as mutually assured emotional arsonists.
Where classic adaptations often luxuriate in windswept passion, this film keeps circling the idea of obsession as addiction. That framing puts it in conversation with contemporary prestige TV—think Euphoria or Normal People—while still letting the corsets do their thing.
Fennell has said in interviews about her approach to romantic narratives that she’s “less interested in soulmates than in what happens when two people become each other’s worst habit.”
It’s a smart choice. The film plays to audiences raised on messy, morally ambiguous protagonists, while still honoring the novel’s bleak emotional landscape.
Performances, Aesthetic, and That Fennell Tone
Fennell’s calling card is tonal whiplash: candy‑colored surfaces with something venomous underneath. In Wuthering Heights, that contrast is more muted but still present. The production design luxuriates in candlelit interiors and tactile textures, yet the cutting and sound design keep underlining how unsafe these spaces really are.
The performances (anchored by a volatile Heathcliff and a Catherine who feels as much like a contemporary toxic influencer as a 19th‑century heroine) are pitched just shy of operatic. There are flashes of dark humor—enough to feel modern, not enough to break the spell.
- Strength: A clear, deliberate viewpoint on a much‑adapted text.
- Strength: Strong visual identity and command of mood.
- Weakness: Some viewers may find the emotional cruelty exhausting rather than cathartic.
- Weakness: Fans of lush, purely romantic versions may miss the old‑fashioned swoon.
As one critic put it, Fennell “directs like someone rearranging the furniture in a haunted house: she can’t exorcise the ghost of Brontë, so she startles us with what’s already there.”
Box Office Reality Check: Where Fennell Sits Among Top Female Directors
While exact figures continue to shift as Wuthering Heights rolls out internationally, its performance has been strong enough to place Emerald Fennell in the contemporary conversation with other top‑grossing female directors. That matters because studios still treat women‑directed projects as statistical outliers, even when their films demonstrably earn money.
The pattern is familiar:
- A woman‑directed film overperforms expectations.
- The industry hails it as progress.
- Greenlights don’t meaningfully shift the next year.
Fennell’s ascent is a small but concrete counterargument: an auteur whose work is neither four‑quadrant superhero fare nor kid‑friendly animation, still carving out real box office share. If anything, it suggests that audiences will show up for challenging, female‑led perspectives when the marketing and distribution muscle are actually there.
Watch the Mood: Trailer and Soundscape
The official trailer for Wuthering Heights leans into gothic spectacle: stark landscapes, fragmented voiceover, and quick cuts of domestic spaces that feel more like traps than homes. The soundtrack tilts modern—not full needle‑drop chaos like Saltburn, but enough contemporary texture to signal this isn’t your grandmother’s Brontë.
If you’re sensitive to themes of emotional abuse and obsession, the trailer is a reliable litmus test; the full film only intensifies that mood. From an accessibility standpoint, recent marketing materials have generally included captioned trailers, a welcome baseline that should frankly be industry standard by now.
Viewing Experience, Accessibility, and Content Considerations
Most major chains now routinely offer open‑captioned or caption‑optional screenings, and a film with this kind of awards‑adjacent profile typically lands on streamers with multiple subtitle and language options. Check local listings or the eventual streaming platform’s accessibility hub for details.
Content‑wise, the film is heavy on:
- Emotional and psychological abuse
- Intense arguments and shouting
- Brief but impactful physical violence
- General themes of grief, class cruelty, and self‑destruction
There’s relatively little graphic on‑screen content compared to some modern dramas, but the emotional tenor is relentlessly stormy. It’s worth knowing that going in.
Beyond the Moors: What Fennell’s Milestone Means for the Future
Emerald Fennell joining the ranks of highest‑grossing female directors with a thorny, unapologetically dark Wuthering Heights is both heartening and slightly infuriating. Heartening, because it proves yet again that audiences will absolutely show up for female‑directed films that aren’t four‑quadrant comfort food. Infuriating, because the Annenberg numbers make clear how exceptional her trajectory still is.
The real test is what happens next: whether studios treat Fennell as a one‑off “auteur gamble that paid off,” or as evidence that giving women sizable budgets and creative freedom is simply good business. For now, Wuthering Heights stands as a bracing, beautifully cruel adaptation and a data point that should, in a more rational industry, help shift the baseline.
If Hollywood is paying attention, the conversation around “can women open movies?” should finally be retired. The better question is: will the people holding the purse strings let them?
