EMILY Bronte's classic novel Wuthering Heights is to again receive the big screen treatment.

Production company Three Hedgehogs Films has begun filming for this latest adaptation of the renowned tale of wild, passionate and demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, set in sweeping and desolate countryside.

Director Elisaveta Abrahall said further filming is due to take place on the moors outside Haworth later this year, though scenes have already been shot in Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Shropshire and Powys.

Wuthering Heights the film has a £100,000 budget and stars Sha'ori Morris as Catherine Earnshaw and Paul Eryk Atlas as Heathcliff.

The production is expected to hit the film festival circuit in spring next year, ready for a wider release in late 2017 or early 2018, in time for the bi-centenary of Emily Bronte's birth.

Miss Abrahall, who is based in Hereford, said: "I'm a Bronte fan myself and I've longed for a definitive version of Wuthering Heights. I've been a fan of the novel since I was a small child.

"Although a lot of the [previous Wuthering Heights] films are extremely good none of them stick closely to Emily's story, and also none of them really investigate the deeper subtext of the novel, so that's what we really hope to do.

"I first read Wuthering Heights when I was about six-years-old and I've read it probably upwards of 20 or 30 times since.

"But even when I was very young I could sense that there was a dramatic subtext going on that wasn't just the story between Cathy and Heathcliff.

"Wuthering Heights goes off on so many different levels and that's virtually never explored.

"When Emily wrote it this was such a socially shocking novel she was actually concerned it would lead to her social expulsion.

"I would like to re-introduce some of that shock factor which we've lost with our 21st century eyes.

"We simply don't understand how shocking the notion was that a lady of reasonably high social standing could fall in love with a gypsy – someone not from her own race, not from her own social class – and abandon all convention to be with him at least on a soul level.

"I want to explore all those things and I want to put the social pertinence back into the film that's never really been explored. I also want to stick very closely to what Emily intended."

Miss Abrahall added that the Bronte Society has been "tremendously" supportive of the project, but said a fundraising appeal was still ongoing to ensure the film can be completed.

People willing to contribute can visit the crowd funding site indiegogo.com/projects/wuthering-heights-feature-film#/ to support the film.

*See next Thursday's Keighley News for more pictures of the lead cast members