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Wrexham in the Premier League? Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds seek a Hollywood finish

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Wrexham in the Premier League? Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds seek a Hollywood finish

When “Welcome to Wrexham,” the Emmy-winning FX docuseries, kicks off its third season Thursday (streaming the next day on Hulu), our intrepid heroes are preparing for their first season in the fourth tier of English soccer after 15 years in the semipro National League.

Funding the team’s rise, and saving the down-on-its-luck Welsh city where the club plays, was the whole point of the series when actors Rob McElhenney (“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) and Ryan Reynolds (“Deadpool”) came up with the idea of buying Wrexham AFC during the pandemic.

So when the club, the third-oldest professional team in the world, was promoted last April — and, spoiler alert, was promoted again this month to the third-tier League One — shouldn’t that have been a wrap? Wasn’t that the time to roll credits?

Not necessarily. Because now the goal has changed.

“That’s the beauty of sport. You just don’t know where it’s going to end,” said McElhenney, a hardcore fan of Philadelphia’s professional sports teams. “Our ultimate goal is to build a sustainable model that will allow us to not only get to the Premier League, but sustain in the Premier League and eventually win the Premier League and be in the Champions League.”

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To put that in perspective, in U.S. sports that would be like taking a rookie-league baseball team and turning it into the New York Yankees — if baseball had promotion and relegation, which it does not. So there really is no comparison.

But since McElhenney and Reynolds come from a world of make believe, where nothing is impossible, why not dream big? Well, for one thing this isn’t a Hollywood script in which the guy gets the girl and evil never wins. There’s no guarantee “Welcome to Wrexham” will have a happy ending.

But it wouldn’t be wise to bet against that.

“That’s part of the gambit here. You’re surrendering to fate,” Reynolds said. “You can’t write the script in advance. You can only work as hard as humanly possible to put the best club and infrastructure out on the onto that pitch and that’s what makes it compelling. That we don’t have that kind of control.

“And in football, not unlike life, anything can happen.”

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Also in football, not unlike life, spending a lot of money can sure improve your odds. And McElhenney and Reynolds have spent a lot of money. It cost them more than $2.5 million to buy the team and another $4.7 million to buy back the freehold of the team’s historic stadium, according to published reports.

They spent on players too. Paul Mullin, the league’s leading scorer in Wrexham’s final two seasons in the fifth-tier National League, and teammate Ben Tozer each made more than $5,000 a week, about three times the league’s average wage. Two others reportedly made $3,700 a week.

That was steep in the National League, one that had been made up of small-town teams often owned by local businessmen who weren’t backed by Hollywood studios. But it’s perfectly legal, too, since the league does not have a salary cap or fair play protections.

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“At the moment, there’s no level playing field,” Jim Parmenter, chairman of National League club Dover, told the Athletic last spring.

In the first episode of Season 2, McElhenney and Reynolds are told Wrexham lost $12 million in their first season despite leading the league in attendance. Yet they kept spending to buy promotion to League 2 later that same season, something for which they make no apologies.

Wrexham co-owner Rob McElhenney, left, celebrates with Wrexham's Elliot Lee after a match against Stockport on Saturday.

Wrexham co-owner Rob McElhenney, left, celebrates with Wrexham’s Elliot Lee after a match against Stockport on Saturday.

(Jon Super / Associated Press)

“The rules and regulations around these leagues are really prescriptive,” Reynolds said. “You have a very clear set of boundaries and rules to work within. And I think every team is encouraged to to work as hard as you possibly can and do whatever you could possibly can within those margins.

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“That’s exactly what we’ve been doing with Wrexham. You can loath me, you can loath Rob, but it’s pretty damn hard to root against this town and what they’ve been through for so many decades and what this club has meant to this town. So we will do anything humanly possible to see that Wrexham continues to progress and grow in the in the world football community.”

Besides, Wrexham isn’t the only club or community that has benefited. According to the the Athletic, 22 the 72 teams in the Championship, League One and League Two — at the second, third and fourth levels of English soccer — are either wholly owned by or have minority investors hailing from the U.S. with 14 of them experiencing new investment since the actors took control at Wrexham in February 2021.

Thanks to the focus of the docuseries, the profile of League 2 has never been higher. And that’s meant higher salaries, more interest and larger crowds, with three teams topping 10,800 a game heading into last weekend, about double the league average last season.

The TV show, Wrexham’s summer tour of the U.S. — a trip that will be repeated this July — plus sponsorship deals with United Airlines and others could push Wrexham’s turnover this season to more than $25 million, nearly four times what it was just two years ago. That’s a rising tide that will lift all the boats in League 2 — and, presumably, next season in League 1.

It’s already lifted Wrexham — the team and the town, which were struggling through some rough times when McElhenney and Reynolds took their gamble, riding to the rescue and lifting the hopes and self-confidence of both.

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“You know, there’s just no sure things. It’s why they have the great expression giant killers in this sport,” Reynolds said. “I think the thing that I’m most surprised by in this whole experience, aside from how forthcoming and vulnerable the folks in Wrexham have been telling their story, is how romantic this game is.

“Prior to Wrexham most of my football exposure came from watching the Canadian national women’s team. I saw glimpses of it with those women fighting for their country and their sport. But boy have I seen it in Wrexham and in this sport in general.

“It’s just the most romantic thing in the world.”

Why would anyone want to see that end?

You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.

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Universal Music invests $80 million in Bollywood production company

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Universal Music invests  million in Bollywood production company

Universal Music Group is investing $80 million for a stake in one of India’s biggest Bollywood production companies, Excel Entertainment Pvt.

Universal Music India, a division of Universal Music Group, will acquire a 30% equity interest in the Mumbai-based movie studio. In the deal, announced Monday, the companies will work together on forthcoming films, series, music and emerging formats.

While getting involved in India’s local film industry, Universal Music will also now receive global distribution rights for all future original soundtracks attached to projects produced or owned by Excel. There are also future plans for the companies to launch an Excel-linked music label that will allow UMG and Universal Music India artists to appear in various Excel titles.

The investment underscores the rapid growth in the Indian entertainment industry.

India is the 15th-largest recorded-music market globally.

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Founded by producers Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar in 1999, Excel is responsible for making over 40 different films and scripted shows. Its most popular titles include “Dil Chahta Hai,” “Don” and “Talaash.” The company is currently valued at approximately $290 million.

“India’s entertainment landscape continues to grow from strength to strength, and this is the perfect moment to build meaningful global collaborations,” said Sidhwani and Akhtar in a joint statement. “Together, we aim to take culturally rooted stories to the world.”

Universal Music Group, with its corporate headquarters in the Netherlands and another office in Santa Monica, was founded in 1996. The music giant behind artists like Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish is valued at roughly $48 billion on the U.S. stock market, with shares selling around $25.80.

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UNTIL DAWN Review

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UNTIL DAWN Review
UNTIL DAWN is a horror movie based on a video game about a group of friends who find themselves trapped in a time loop, reliving the same night repeatedly with increasingly terrifying, fatal threats. One year after her sister Melanie vanished without a trace, Clover and her friends look to find more information about her disappearance. Clues lead them to an abandoned mining town implied to be in Pennsylvania. This place of unimaginable horrors traps them all in a horrifying time loop where they’re murdered again and again. They must work together to survive without losing themselves in the never-ending time loop of gruesome murder.

UNTIL DAWN is nicely shot and paced well, with believable performances. However, the movie has a strong humanist worldview featuring gruesome violence, lots of strong foul language, and excessive gore. The violence includes psychopathic killers, people spontaneously exploding, stabbings, kidnapping, demonic possession, and more. The frequent dying over and over in the plot of UNTIL DAWN puts the sanctity of life into question. It forces the characters to conduct abhorrent and unacceptable immoral actions for survival.

(HH, Pa, C, O, Ho, LLL, VVV, S, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Strong humanist worldview that twists the concept of modern psychology into a supernatural hellscape with unexplained time loops and reoccurring nightmarish horror filled with excessive violence and gore, but with unexplained pagan supernatural elements (such as a storm circling a house, the appearance of more buildings, the time loop itself, and many more), the time loop perverts the laws of mortality and implies that the consequences of violence, murder, suicide, etc., don’t apply, the psychologist controlling the time loop discusses the situation with modern psychology in vague circles meant to confuse and disorient the nature of the reality in which the victims are trapped, religion or God is not explicitly discussed, but there’s an unexplained cross in front of a house that isn’t explained and a character references the belief that a possessed person cannot become possessed through contact but rather weakness of faith, and some occult content where one woman is a self-described psychic and is into “woo-woo” stuff as another character describes it, she tries to amplify her psychic abilities with help from the others by holding hands and meditation, and she often has strong feelings and seems to have a sense the others do not have, but no worship or symbols are shown, plus a girl dating a guy is said to have previously dated a girl as well as other men;

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Foul Language:

At least 101 obscenities (including 62 “f” words), two strong profanities mentioning the name of Jesus, and four light profanities;

Violence:

Very severe violence and gratuitous blood and gore throughout including but not limited to dead bodies, monsters, scarred masked psychopath, stabbing, beating, and people spontaneously exploding;

Sex:

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No sex shown, but a person puts on a VHS tape and a pornographic movie is heard playing briefly but not shown, and a woman is said to date a lot of people and one time dated another woman;

Nudity:

No nudity;

Alcohol Use:

No alcohol use;

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Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking or drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

A psychologist is a callous antagonist whose motives are relatively unknown beyond having a morbid curiosity that led to awful experiments and playing games with other people, he purposely keeps people trapped for no known reason other than his sick and twisted observations that end in gruesome murder and unnecessary torture.

UNTIL DAWN is a horror movie based on a video game about a group of friends who find themselves trapped in a time loop, reliving the same night repeatedly with increasingly terrifying, fatal threats.
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One year after her sister Melanie vanished without a trace, Clover and her friends look to find more information about her disappearance. Clues lead them to an abandoned mining town. This place of unimaginable horrors traps them all in a horrifying time loop where they will be murdered again and again.

UNTIL DAWN is nicely shot and paced well, with believable performances, but it has a strong humanist worldview overall with some occult elements is filled with gruesome violence, gore, lots of strong foul language, and a time loop that leads to an increasing amount of horrific murder and unacceptable immoral actions for survival.

The movie begins with a woman named Melanie clawing her way through the dirt with an unknown monster chasing after her. Digging her way out, she looks up to a masked psychopath standing over her with a scythe. She begs him, “No! Please not again. I can’t!” He fatally stabs her without a thought. It cuts to the main title, and an hourglass is shown with a ticking clock sound and unsettling music.

Cut to a group pf people in a red car driving up a winding mountain, an obvious nod to THE SHINING. It’s been one year after Clover’s sister Melanie vanished without a trace. The group consists of Max, Nina, Megan, Abe, and Clover. Shortly after their mother died, Melanie had decided to start a new life in New York. Clover decided to stay, which created tension between the sisters before Melanie left.

Clover and her friends are looking for more information about her disappearance. Their last stop is the last place she was seen in a video message taken in front of a middle-of-nowhere gas station. Megan, a proclaimed psychic, wants to join hands outside and see if they can feel any mystical energy regarding Melanie. Their attempt is cut short when an RV blares its horn and almost hits them, scaring them all.

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Clover goes inside the gas station for a cup of coffee while the others talk outside. Clover asks the man behind the register if he worked here last year. After confirming he’s been working there for years, she shows him a picture of Melanie from the video. He asks if she was missing and clarifies saying that Clover is not the first to come asking. When she asks if many people around here go missing, he says people “get in trouble” in Glore Valley. As their only lead, the group decides to go there and stick together.

Nervously driving to the valley in an increasingly dangerous storm, the group begins to question what they are doing. Suddenly the storm stops but is still raging behind them. They park in front of a house with a “Welcome Center” sign, with the storm circling around the area but leaving the house dry. Confused, they get out of the car and look around. Nina decides to see if there’s anyone inside so they can come up with a plan. Everyone goes in except Clover, who walks up to the strange rain wall.

Inside the house, they find a dated and dusty interior. The power and water don’t work, and they conclude that they are the first people to come there in years. There is a strange hourglass with a skull on the wall. Checking the guest book, Nina finds Melanie’s name signed multiple times, with increasingly shaky handwriting. In another room, Abe finds many missing posters with faces on a bulletin board and finds poster with Melanie’s face.

Outside, Clover thinks she sees a person in the rain. She also hears Melanie’s voice and runs after it. Concerned, Max calls after her and he pulls her back in. As Nina signs the guestbook, the sun suddenly sets and the clock starts ticking.

Inside the house now with the hourglass turned over, they try to understand what’s happening. The car is out in the rain now with someone revving the engine threateningly. Some of them go to the dark basement, where the lights don’t work. There is an eerie sense of dread as Abe goes to check out a noise, and Nina finds a scarred and masked psychopath standing in a room as the top half of Abe’s body falls to the ground.

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Hearing the commotion upstairs, the others go to see what happened and Max spots the killer. They run to hide, and the apparently invincible psychopath horrifically stabs each of them as they try to fight back. The sand in the hourglass runs back, as each character returns to where they were when Nina originally signed the book (she now signs it a second time). They remember what had just taken place, and how they were all murdered. Clearly stuck in this time loop escape room situation, they will now have to figure out how to escape this terrifying hellscape as the situations get worse with every loop.

UNTIL DAWN is nicely shot and paced well, with believable performances. However, the movie has a strong humanist worldview featuring gruesome violence, lots of strong foul language, and excessive gore. The violence includes psychopathic killers, people spontaneously exploding, stabbings, kidnapping, demonic possession, and more. The frequent dying over and over in the plot puts the sanctity of life into question. It forces the characters to conduct abhorrent and unacceptable immoral actions for survival.

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