Adelle Else
The Gothic lives on—but who owns the story? Guillermo del Toro’s 2025 Frankenstein has been praised as a reverent, emotionally faithful reimagining of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel. Emerald Fennell’s 2026 Wuthering Heights, by contrast, has already sparked controversy for its stylized modern aesthetic—latex skirts, metallic nightdresses, and interiors that evoke sensual art-house decadence more than windswept Yorkshire moors. Like Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, punctuated by anachronistic blue Converse sneakers, Fennell’s adaptation appears to call to the loose spirit of Emily Brontë rather than to historical fidelity.
The public response reveals a fascinating legal tension. What does it mean to adapt a classic “faithfully”? When a novel has entered the public domain, the law imposes no obligation of reverence. Yet audiences often behave as if such an obligation exists. The uneasy intersection of creative freedom and authorial legacy is unearthed in the context of Gothic classics reborn for the global streaming age. The contrasting reception of two iconic works—Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights—examines whether fidelity is a legal requirement, a moral one, or merely a cultural expectation projected onto the dead.
Both Frankenstein (1818) and Wuthering Heights (1847) reside in the U.S. public domain. Their copyright protections have expired, allowing adaptation without permission.1 That freedom, however, does not resolve the question of authorial integrity. In the United States, literary works enjoy no broad statutory moral rights.2 The Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA) is limited to visual art.3 Adaptation fidelity is therefore not legally mandated, but, at most, a matter of contract.
By contrast, many European jurisdictions recognize inalienable moral rights, including the right of integrity—preventing unauthorized distortion or modification of the work—and the right of attribution.4 Under such regimes, a radical reimagining might raise more than aesthetic objections.
Fennell appears acutely aware of this tension. She reportedly placed quotation marks around her title, disclaiming strict fidelity: “You can’t adapt a book as dense and complicated and difficult as this book… I can’t say I’m making Wuthering Heights.”5 Indeed, the film roughly captures only the first half of the novel, trimming characters and reshaping plotlines. The gesture feels less like an apology than a legal distancing.
There may even be a legal strategy to skewing faithfulness into forsaking—to avoid infringing earlier adaptations. New expressive elements in film adaptations remain protected even when the source work is in the public domain.6 Thus, studios need to be cautious of copying prior adaptations’ creative choices. Fennell’s radical reimagining in that instance is likely to be safe from the muted 2011 adaptation by Andrea Arnold, which was notably devoid of freckled skin walls and Charlie XCX’s pop-techno soundtracks.
The answer as to why del Toro’s Frankenstein was hailed while Wuthering Heights was condemned seems to correspond to the question of what audiences think they are owed. While there is no statutory requirement of fidelity, a different cultural enforcement mechanism may be at work. Even where legal moral rights appear weak, audiences function as an informal rights enforcer. Upon release of the Wuthering Heights trailer, book purists were outraged, sparking a social media backlash rivaling the stormy tempers of the Earnshaw household.
This raises a consideration of the cultural policing of canon. Classics occupy a quasi-sacred space wherein they are legally free in the public domain but are culturally shared, creating a paradox in which everyone feels ownership despite the lack thereof. When critics lament that “Brontë is rolling in her grave,” they invoke a moral vocabulary strikingly similar to the European right of integrity. The complaint is not economic. It is reputational. The perceived injury lies in distortion. Audiences cannot successfully enjoin or sue, but they can damage reception, affect the box office, and shape public perception.
Frankenstein, also starring Jacob Elordi, lurks in contrast to his later project. It has been lauded for humanizing The Creature and retaining the novel’s Arctic framing structure often omitted in earlier adaptations. Audiences were ‘surprised’ by the relatively faithful retelling – calling it “one of the only films to capture the spirit of Shelley’s story and lay it bare on the screen.”7 Del Toro took his own creative liberties, but they did not appear to sever the adaptation from its literary core.
Taken together, Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights reveal that, in the streaming era, classic literature functions less as text and more as an intellectual property brand. Studios must weigh not only legal clearance but also cultural stewardship. In the absence of enforceable moral rights, reputation fills the gap. Within the public domain, no one owns the Gothic—but everyone feels entitled to it.
[1] Cornell Univ. Lib. Copyright Servs., Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States (2026), https://guides.library.cornell.edu/copyright/publicdomain.
[2] David Borchard, Protecting Artistic Elements as Trademarks, in Trademarks & the Arts 47 (Cowan, Leibowitz & Latman, P.C. 1999).
[3] Id.
[4] Id., at 46.
[5] Lauren Puckett-Pope & Erica Gonzales, How the Wuthering Heights Movie Changes the Book, ELLE (Feb. 16, 2026), https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a70346113/wuthering-heights-review-book-movie-changes/.
[6] U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright in Derivative Works and Compilations (Circular 14) (2024), https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf.
[7] Gianna Ortner-Findlay, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein Surprises in Relatively Faithful Retelling, NT Daily (Nov. 17, 2025), https://www.ntdaily.com/dose/guillermo-del-toro-s-frankenstein-surprises-in-relatively-faithful-retelling/article_3e7cb961-9a84-4c68-9f00-7d9a347588e7.html.