Emerald Fennell and Guillermo del Toro Release Literary Adaptations Amid Audience Expectations Debate

Two major film adaptations of classic novels are generating discussion about audience expectations. Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein releases later this month, staying closer to Mary Shelley's original text by giving the monster voice and intellect. Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights arrives on Valentine's Day 2026, featuring Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff opposite Margot Robbie. Early test screenings of Fennell's film reportedly included provocative elements like 'horse-rein sex' and 'suggestive egg yolks'. Fennell spoke at the Brontë Women's Writing Festival in Haworth, Yorkshire last month, describing adaptation as an 'act of extreme masochism'. The article references Barbara Johnson's 1982 essay 'My Monster/My Self' analyzing Shelley's novel as exploring impossible parenting models. Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptations of Thomas Pynchon novels, including 2025's One Battle After Another and 2014's Inherent Vice, demonstrate successful approaches to 'unfilmable' texts. Yorgos Lanthimos's 2023 Poor Things represents part of the same aesthetic lineage as these new adaptations. The Guardian reported details from early Wuthering Heights screenings. Netflix promotes del Toro's Frankenstein with the tagline 'There are two sides to every story'. Helen Charman, author of 2024's Mother State, examines how contemporary adaptations navigate fidelity to source material.