Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have made no decision on Season 5 of Welcome to Wrexham, but the documentary could survive “brutal” relegation.
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Cameras followed drama since takeover in 2021New series will document 2024-25 campaignInterest remains high during era of successFollow GOAL on WhatsApp! 🟢📱WHAT HAPPENED?
That is the opinion of club director Humphrey Ker, who has been by the side of two Hollywood superstars in North Wales ever since they completed a stunning takeover in 2021. The plan at that stage was always to invite cameras behind the scenes and deliver a fly-on-the-wall account of a remarkable sporting adventure.
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There has been plenty of drama for an Emmy Award-winning series to cover – including a National League title triumph and automatic promotion out of League Two – while the Red Dragons are now flying high in the third tier of English football.
WHAT HUMPHREY KER SAID
Welcome to Wrexham will be returning in 2025, but how long could the production run for? Ker said when that question was put to him on the podcast: “We can’t really control how much more of that we get. It still does very well, wins Emmys, does all sorts of stuff that you would hope would make it a big tick for FX and Hulu. But, who knows?
“The TV industry is very volatile. Albeit, being a successful show that is on TV is to your advantage as they will be like ‘people like this so we may as well keep it going’. But we don’t know if there will be a season five yet.
“For me, every year, amazing, fascinating stories happen around football clubs and around this football club in particular. It’s funny because people say to me ‘what will happen if you get relegated or have a bad season?’ Actually, that could make an even more compelling season of television.
“It wouldn’t be fun and it would be brutal, because of the ramifications of that, but you would get a ‘what happens when the bubble bursts?’ season. It could be even more interesting than just ‘oh, we’ve been promoted again’.”
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Ker added on Welcome to Wrexham being less important to the club as a whole, and their bank balance, the more steps up the EFL ladder are taken: “We’re very aware of this, the further up we go in the pyramid, the less of a problem it becomes because you are then receiving so much more exposure and coverage.
“The great thing is, the length of time that we have already enjoyed on this documentary, and with the U.S. tours, I think we have locked a lot of people into a long-term relationship. But of course the sponsorship deals and so much of that is much more about being seen on the documentary than it is about having your shirts at St James Park in Exeter, who wherever it may be.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. But, it’s something we are very cognizant of because we didn’t want to get caught with our pants down all of a sudden if ‘oh, no documentary’.”