5 Reasons Why 2026's Wuthering Heights Ruled The Box Office

Warner Bros.

It was a fruitful Valentine's Day weekend for theaters as several new, big wide release movies performed near or above expectations. It also doesn't hurt that Monday brings the President's Day holiday, which always helps to pad out earnings for any new release. But it was Emerald Fennell's "Wuthering Heights" leading the way as it bested the competition to take the top spot at the box office.

With a cast headlined by Margot Robbie ("Barbie") and Jacob Elordi ("Frankenstein"), Fennell's latest opened with an estimated $34.8 million domestically to go with $42 million internationally for a $76.8 million start. That's just through Sunday. Once the Monday grosses are factored in, those numbers are expected to grow to $38 million and $45 million, respectively, bringing the movie's total to $83 million. Pre-release estimates pegged "Wuthering Heights" as the movie that would bring the box office back to life, though it did fall slightly short of expectations, which were closer to $45 million domestically for the weekend.

In any event, it's a good start to 2026 for Warner Bros. The studio had a stellar year in 2025, setting a record with six movies opening to $40 million or more in a row. While "Wuthering Heights" still has a long way to go before it reaches profitability, due to its hefty $80 million production budget, it looks like another win for the studio that brought you "Sinners," "F1," and "Weapons."

So, what went right here? How did Fennell manage to score her biggest mainstream hit yet? How did Warner Bros. manage to be on the right side of yet another big gamble? We're going to look at the biggest reasons why "Wuthering Heights" was a big hit on its opening weekend. Let's get into it.

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Critics were a bit mixed on "Wuthering Heights" overall; the movie boasts a 61% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, as of this writing. The audience score is more favorable at 80%. It also carries a decent but not great B CinemaScore, which might impact its legs in the coming weeks. That remains to be seen. What we can say definitively though, despite whatever mixed reception exists, is that the movie resonated with its intended audience.

"Wuthering Heights" is based on Emily Brontë's classic novel of the same name. Very basically, it centers on a foundling named Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) who falls in love with Catherine Earnshaw (Margot Robbie), a woman from a wealthy family in 18th-century England. She ends up marrying another man, causing a rift between them. Things get heated from there. Hong Chau ("The Whale"), Alison Oliver ("Task"), and Shazad Latif ("Star Trek: Discovery") also star.

BJ Colangelo, in her review of "Wuthering Heights" for /Film, called it a "breathtaking twist on a classic," but one that is "righteously doomed to be polarizing." In fairness, Emerald Fennell is no stranger to making polarizing cinema, with her previous credits including "Promising Young Woman" and "Saltburn." It's part of what she does and it's part of the reason why her movies generate buzz. Thus far, this one is no exception. Warner Bros. wanted to craft something that would get people talking and get romantic and/or horny folks out to theaters over V-Day weekend. Mission accomplished.

Warner Bros.

This one may seem obvious but it's no less true: releasing "Wuthering Heights" over Valentine's Day weekend was a slam dunk. It was the perfect release date for this kind of movie for a variety of reasons. For one (and most obviously), without getting into the larger conversation around the movie, it's a romantic tale, one suited to the date night vibes that come along with the holiday. It was the biggest, best, and only game in town to scratch that itch for prospective ticket buyers. Someone had to fill the void, and Warner Bros. did precisely that.

Beyond that, the weekend's other new releases weren't stepping directly on this movie's turf. Sony's animated "GOAT" ($27.2 million) and Amazon's aptly-titled crime thriller "Crime 101" ($24.1) did a fair amount of business, but those were counterprogramming. As was director Gore Verbinski's bonkers AI apocalypse sci-fi flick "Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die" ($3.6 million). None of them were stepping on Emerald Fennell's turf.

It also came after a January and early February that had some noteworthy moments such as "Send Help," Sam Raimi's first horror movie in 17 years to open at number one, as well as the indie sensation "Iron Lung" from Markiplier. But there hadn't been an outright "big" movie since December and audiences were ready for something that felt like a blockbuster. "Wuthering Heights" was the right movie at the right time.

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There's that old saying "there is no such thing as bad publicity." In the case of "Wuthering Heights," that's probably true. Warner Bros. launched a pretty impressive, lavish marketing campaign for this one, leaning into the impressive look of Emerald Fennell's adaptation of this classic novel, as well as its attractive cast, and even the soundtrack provided by Charlie XCX. That all helped.

Beyond that through, this movie has generated a metric f***-ton of online conversation. Good or bad, it's a movie that got people talking. That's in part because Fennell's take on "Wuthering Heights" made a lot of changes to Emily Brontë's story, which is always going to generate a certain amount of chatter. Then there's all of the various opinion pieces that have flooded the internet, which have only served to make people curious who might not have otherwise been automatically invested. "Why are people making such a big deal about this romantic movie?"

The first social media reactions to "Wuthering Heights" also sort of framed it as a "love it or hate it" proposition for viewers. In some cases, that can lead to a "wait to stream" mentality. In this case, it seemed to point people, at least in the early going, to see for themselves. It's a case of the right kind of movie generating the right kind of talk that leads to real-world interest. That doesn't always happen, but it's hard to ignore the impact of online buzz with this one.

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Margot Robbie has been a part of some really big movies. "Barbie" was one of the biggest box office surprises of 2023, taking in more than $1.4 billion worldwide. "The Wolf of Wall Street" and "Suicide Squad" were also huge. But Robbie isn't one of those automatic "I will see her in absolutely anything" stars. Meanwhile, Jacob Elordi's star is still very much on the rise. "Euphoria" is a massive show, and "Frankenstein" helped bring him to a new, bigger audience recently.

Neither of them alone is going to offer a guarantee of any sort in terms of actually getting people to leave the house to go see a movie in a theater. That said, the combination of Robbie and Elordi, in this specific way at the center of the romance in "Wuthering Heights," was a recipe for success. For fans of either or both of these stars, this is precisely the kind of movie people want to see them in. It's not just a chance to see them doing steamy things on screen; it's also very much a showcase for both of their talents in lavish setting. It's a compelling pairing.

It's not altogether unlike pairing Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney together in "Anyone But You," which helped turned that movie into a huge hit several years ago. The casting controversy surrounding Jacob Elordi in "Wuthering Heights," which has to do with Heathcliff's race in the novel, wasn't nearly big enough to derail anything. At the end of the day, this was the perfect combination of star power at the right time to help make a risky bet on a visionary filmmaker more of a sure thing.

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It feels ridiculous that we still have to have this conversation in 2026 but nonetheless, here we are. Making movies aimed at women is straight-up good for business. There's no two ways about it. For whatever reason, Hollywood has been far more obsessed with making movies aimed more squarely at men for a long time, as so many of the franchises that have anchored studios for decades now unquestionably have men in mind first.

Yet, in recent years, when a movie is made with women in mind that is above Hallmark Channel levels of quality, more often than not it works out quite well. Once again, see "Barbie" a few years ago. Beyond that, we can look at "It Ends With Us," which was one of the movies that helped save the box office in 2024, going on to make $350 million globally. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

We can look at last year's "Regretting You" which, despite earning lousy reviews, legged out to more than $90 million worldwide against a so-so opening. Heck, we can even go back to 2022 when "Where the Crawdads Sing" was a huge surprise and grossed more than $140 million worldwide against a $17 million domestic opening. "Anyone But You," "The Lost City," and "Ticket to Paradise" are other damn fine examples of this working.

Put simply, studios investing meaningful resources into making movies for underserved audiences is good for business. It's absolutely insane that "women" are an underserved demographic but all the same, it does seem like Hollywood is starting to see that money is being left on the table. Better late than never.

"Wuthering Heights" is in theaters now.