Ryan Reynolds and the Wrexham takeover

A football club is rarely transformed by the pandemic-era videoconference-link purchase by an American Hollywood ownership-team that had never previously visited the club ground in person. Wrexham A.F.C. in November 2020 was the oldest-Welsh-football-club (founded at the Turf Hotel meeting in 1864, the foundational meeting of the Welsh-football-administration), then competing in the fifth-tier National League at the Racecourse Ground in the North-East-Wales border-town of Wrexham, with the eleven-year supporters-trust-governance-history since the 2011 supporters-trust-takeover from the Hamilton-and-Stephanie-Lake-ownership era.

THE VANCOUVER-BORN ACTOR

Ryan Rodney Reynolds was born at the Vancouver General Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on the twenty-third of October 1976, fourth and youngest son of James Chester Reynolds, an Irish-Canadian wholesale-food-distribution-executive of the Vancouver Irish-Canadian-Catholic-community, and Tammy Stewart, of mixed Scottish-Irish-English Canadian descent. He was raised in the Kitsilano-and-Point-Grey middle-class-Vancouver-residential-districts, was schooled at Kitsilano Secondary School, and took up acting at fourteen on the 1991-Vancouver-junior-television-series Hillside (the Canadian-CBC junior-soap-opera of the early 1990s).

He took the senior-television-actor career across the 1991-to-2002 period on the Vancouver-and-Toronto-and-Los-Angeles Canadian-and-American television-series rotation (the 1991-1995 Hillside, the 1998-2001 Two Guys and a Girl ABC sitcom on which Reynolds played the central single Berg lead-role across the four-season network-run), and made the first leading-film-role at the 2002 Buying the Cow indie-feature. He took up the blockbuster-Hollywood-leading-role-career across the 2003-to-2015 Reynolds-and-twentieth-century-Fox-and-Warner-Bros action-leading-role period (the 2003 Van Wilder sequel, the 2005 Just Friends, the 2009 X-Men Origins: Wolverine on which Reynolds played the first Deadpool/Wade Wilson Marvel-cinematic-universe role, the 2011 Green Lantern Warner-DC superhero-film, the 2014 Captives, the 2015 Self/Less).

THE DEADPOOL ERA

The foundational moment of the modern Reynolds-Hollywood-career came on the February 2016 twentieth-century-Fox Deadpool release. The Deadpool R-rated Marvel-cinematic-universe superhero-action-comedy-film (directed by Tim Miller on the five-year Reynolds-personal-passion-project development-history that Reynolds had pursued since the 2009 Wolverine Deadpool character-introduction) grossed the 783-million-dollars worldwide on the 58-million-dollar production-budget, the highest-grossing R-rated film in cinema history at the time-of-release, and was the foundational Reynolds-leading-blockbuster role. The Deadpool 2 of the May 2018 release grossed the 785-million-dollars worldwide on the 110-million-dollar production-budget; the Deadpool & Wolverine of the July 2024 Disney-Marvel release grossed the 1.3-billion-dollars worldwide on the 200-million-dollar production-budget, the highest-grossing R-rated film in cinema history.

THE STANDING-BUSINESS CAREER

Reynolds developed across the 2016-to-2024 period the leading-celebrity-business Maximum-Effort production-company-and-Aviation-Gin-and-Mint-Mobile investment-portfolio. He acquired the majority-shareholding in Aviation American Gin (the Portland-Oregon craft-gin distillery) in 2018 in his forty-second year, sold the Aviation-Gin shareholding to Diageo in August 2020 for the 610-million-dollars on the Diageo-acquisition. He acquired the majority-shareholding in Mint Mobile (the Los-Angeles US wireless-MVNO mobile-phone-service-provider) in 2019, sold the Mint-Mobile shareholding to T-Mobile US in March 2023 for the 1.35-billion-dollars on the T-Mobile-acquisition. The two-deals consolidated his post-Hollywood business-investor reputation as the leading single Hollywood-actor-business-investor of his generation.

THE WREXHAM PURCHASE

Reynolds was introduced to Rob McElhenney (the It's-Always-Sunny-in-Philadelphia FX-series co-creator and Philadelphia-Wynnewood Philadelphia-Irish-American actor-and-writer) through the Hollywood-celebrity-introduction-network in early 2020. McElhenney had identified the Wrexham A.F.C. as the club candidate for a joint-American-Hollywood ownership-investment on the strength of the It's-Always-Sunny football-historical-romance and the Wrexham oldest-Welsh-football-club founding-history. Reynolds-and-McElhenney took up the Wrexham acquisition-due-diligence across the summer-and-autumn of 2020 with the Wrexham-Supporters Trust governance-body.

The Reynolds-and-McElhenney purchase of Wrexham A.F.C. completed on the seventeenth of November 2020 on the two-million-pound-purchase-price from the Wrexham-Supporters-Trust. The acquisition-agreement included the substantial Reynolds-and-McElhenney capital-investment-commitment to the Racecourse Ground-stadium-infrastructure-improvements, the Wrexham-women's-and-men's-first-team investment-commitment, and the Welcome-to-Wrexham FX documentary-series television-production-arrangement.

THE STANDING-THREE-CONSECUTIVE PROMOTIONS

Wrexham A.F.C. won the 2022-23 National League title (the fifth-tier-to-fourth-tier promotion to League Two, ending the fifteen-year Wrexham non-league tradition), the 2023-24 League Two promotion (to the third-tier League One under the second-place League-Two final-table finish), and the 2024-25 League One promotion (to the second-tier Championship under the second-place League-One final-table finish on the 3 May 2025 promotion-confirmation). The three-consecutive-promotions made Wrexham the first English-football-club to achieve three consecutive promotions in succession since 1985. The 2025-26 Championship-season is the first Wrexham-season in the second-tier of English football since the 1981-82 season.

The Welcome to Wrexham FX documentary-series (the twenty-eight-episode joint-Reynolds-McElhenney Welcome-to-Wrexham FX Disney-Plus-streaming series across the 2022-to-2024 series-run) won the 2023-Primetime-Emmy-Award for the Outstanding-Unstructured-Reality-Programming category, brought the Wrexham-club into the international-popular-sports-recognition, and established the Reynolds-and-McElhenney celebrity-owner public-football-club-management template. The 2024-25 Wrexham-Racecourse-Ground stadium-redevelopment Kop-Stand-reconstruction project (the 15-million-pound stadium-redevelopment that opened on the 2024-25 season) and the Racecourse-Ground-capacity expansion to 16,000 (the Reynolds-and-McElhenney committed-capital-investment for the 2025-26 Championship-season) are the foundational physical-infrastructure-legacy of the Reynolds-and-McElhenney Wrexham-ownership.

The Reynolds name in modern Wrexham-and-British-football culture carries the weight of the pandemic-era videoconference-link purchase of the seventeenth of November 2020.