Novel adaptation instant yes for rising Australian star

Jacob Elordi was planning to take a break from acting before being offered a lead role in Wuthering Heights.

The 27-year-old Australian actor revealed he had been planning a career break after a busy few years, but when his Saltburn director Emerald Fennell texted him about the opportunity to play Heathcliff opposite Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw, he couldn't say no.

"I was really lucky. I was going to take a break for a while, and then Emerald just very simply texted me, and you can't run from that text," he told IndieWire.

Elordi loved working with Barbie star Robbie, saying: "She's incredible in the film, she's a livewire. I'm so, so excited for people to see it. She's a beautiful actor and she gave so, so much."

Along with Elordie and Robbie, the cast includes Shazad Latif as Edgar Linton, Hong Chau as Nelly Dean, and Jacob's Saltburn co-star Alison Oliver as Isabella Linton.

Robbie will produce through her LuckyChap production company, marking the third collaboration between Fennell and LuckyChap after Saltburn and Promising Young Woman.

Wuthering Heights is due to drop in February 2026, and Emerald Fennell told fans in 2024 that an adaptation of the classic novel would be her third feature film.

"Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad," she wrote on social media which is a line from the novel.

Actor Barry Keoghan, who also starred opposite Elordi in Saltburn, previously admitted he would be interested in a part in the movie.

"Anything that Emerald puts her hands on, I'm there. She's incredible," he told Variety.

Speaking about Fennell's work, Margot has previously said: "Emerald immerses you into a world so quickly. She's so masterful at tone and plot."

"She gets in your brain and she kind of taps into the most depraved parts of it, so that you're complicit in the story.

"That's the water-cooler moment - the thing that people are talking about two weeks afterwards."