Margot Robbie’s Wild R-Rated Movie Is Blowing Up on Streaming

Critics were divided and book purists were outraged, but streaming audiences have made their verdict clear. Emerald Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights’, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, landed on HBO Max on May 1 and claimed the number one spot on the platform within days, proving once again that controversy rarely hurts a film’s long-term appeal.

The romantic drama claimed the top position on HBO Max’s U.S. movie charts by May 3, displacing ‘Marty Supreme’, which had held the number one slot for the entire preceding week. The film also appeared simultaneously at number six on the same chart, occupying two spots at once. Globally, the film topped the HBO Max charts in 32 countries within a day of its streaming debut.

The film arrived on the platform after earning roughly $242 million at the worldwide box office following its theatrical release on Valentine’s Day weekend, during which it opened to $37.5 million domestically. Warner Bros. produced the film on an $80 million budget, and the theatrical run was enough to make it profitable, though the path to that result was not without friction.

The critical reception was notably mixed from the start. The film holds a 58% approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, but audiences rated it considerably higher at 76%, a gap that reflects the passionate division the film stirred throughout its theatrical run.

On Letterboxd, the film averaged just 2.8 out of 5, with debates raging not just about the movie itself but about what obligations an adaptation has to its source material.

Much of the criticism centered on casting choices and faithfulness to the novel, as Heathcliff is described in the original text as dark-skinned and Romani, and the film continued a long tradition of adaptations that overlooked those details entirely. Others took issue with the film’s heavy emphasis on physical desire over emotional depth, though some critics pushed back on those assessments, with the Daily Telegraph’s Robbie Collin awarding the film a perfect five stars and describing it as “resplendently lurid, oozy and wild.”

For Fennell, ‘Wuthering Heights’ marks her third directorial feature, following ‘Promising Young Woman’ and ‘Saltburn’, both of which provoked similarly polarized reactions that ultimately helped rather than hindered their cultural footprint. Robbie also produced the film alongside Fennell and Josey McNamara, continuing a creative partnership that first began with ‘Saltburn’.

In interviews ahead of the release, Robbie framed the film as a sweeping romantic epic in the tradition of ‘The Notebook’ and ‘The English Patient’, positioning it for audiences hungry for that kind of emotionally charged, old-fashioned storytelling. The streaming numbers suggest those audiences found exactly what they were looking for, regardless of what critics or literary fans had to say about it.

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