Kevin R. Wright, a former Marine turned Marvel Studios executive, is speaking about his new production company, Ithaca, which he co-founded with actor Tom Hiddleston after the pair worked together on Disney+'s Loki. Their creative partnership began in 2018 when Wright pitched Hiddleston the original concept for the series, and it proved successful enough that Hiddleston later proposed they continue collaborating, prompting Wright to leave Marvel Studios to launch the new venture. The story matters as it marks a significant career shift for both men, extending their working relationship beyond a single studio franchise into independent production.

Their first joint project under this new arrangement is the National Geographic series Pompeii: Out of Time, inspired by a formative trip Hiddleston took to Italy in 1998 as a 17-year-old, which later led him to study Classics at the University of Cambridge. The idea had already been tested in a Loki episode featuring a time-travel visit to Pompeii, and National Geographic subsequently approached Hiddleston about a factual series, partly influenced by co-star Chris Hemsworth's own Nat Geo work. Hiddleston describes the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, which destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum and killed thousands, with remarkably preserved details such as carbonised bread still in an oven and around 100 plaster-cast victims on display at the site.