Hugh Jackman is talking to Norwich, and Ryan Reynolds’ Wrexham are nine places above them

Hugh Jackman was asked in a talkSPORT interview, reported on Thursday, whether he fancied buying a piece of Norwich City. His answer was that he is “very, very interested” and talking about it right now, which is a long way from a signed deal but a lot further than most celebrity football stories get.

If it happens, English football’s second tier will contain a club part-owned by Wolverine and a club owned by Deadpool. That is not why it matters, but it is why everyone is talking about it.

He turned this down once already

Jackman’s connection to Norwich is his mother, who is from the city. He has been to Carrow Road, he has called himself a Canaries fan for years, and in 2010 he was offered the chance to come in as a minority investor and said no. He has since described that as a mistake, which is the sort of thing you say when a friend’s football club has become a global television property and yours has not.

Norwich are majority owned by Mark Attanasio, the American investor who also runs the Milwaukee Brewers in Major League Baseball. Attanasio holds 85 per cent. Delia Smith and Michael Wynn-Jones, who ran the club for 28 years until 2024, kept 10 per cent between them. The last five per cent sits with fans and small individual investors.

Wrexham set the template, and it worked

Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney bought Wrexham in 2021, when the club was in the National League and had been out of the Football League since 2008. Then came three promotions in a row: National League champions in 2022-23, runners-up in League Two the season after, and up from League One in April 2025 with a 3-0 win over Charlton. The first of those ended a 15-year exile from the Football League. No club in Football League history had gone up three seasons running through the top five divisions.

The documentary did the rest. Wrexham became a club people in Mumbai and Manila have opinions about, which is a strange thing to happen to a Welsh side that was in the fifth tier four years ago. That is the model any new celebrity owner is buying into, and it is worth being honest that it worked partly because the football worked. Three promotions is not a marketing outcome.

The table is less romantic

Four games into the season, Wrexham are 11th with five points from a win, two draws and a defeat. Norwich are 20th on three points, having won once and lost three times, with five goals scored and seven conceded. Preston sit bottom on nothing, Southampton have a four-point deduction, and the promotion race is currently led by Swansea, QPR and Charlton, all on ten.

Jackman, asked about it, tipped both Norwich and Wrexham to go up this season. That is what you say when a microphone is in front of you. It is also, at this point, a bolder call than it sounds.

Norwich went down in April 2022, the sixth time they have been relegated from the Premier League and more than any other club. They have not got back. The closest they came was the 2024 play-off semi-final, which Leeds won 4-0. A famous new investor does not fix a defence. What it does do is put Carrow Road in front of an audience that has never heard of it, and Wrexham have shown what that is worth.

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