Hollywood success stories often have a lot of overlap, but not in the case of Loki executive producer Kevin R. Wright.
The Philadelphia native postponed his film school dreams to enlist in the Marine Corps just a few months before 9/11, and he ended up serving as a combat correspondent for four years. From there, he enrolled at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts and majored in writing for film and television. Upon graduating as valedictorian, Wright moved to Los Angeles and paid his dues as an intern for a few years. He nearly gave up his pursuit until a chance meeting with Marvel Studios presented itself.
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Wright then joined the Marvel ranks as a development assistant before working as the production and development manager on Doctor Strange (2016). That led to an associate producer position on Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), which put him on a path towards becoming a full-fledged producer. Once Marvel Studios expanded to streaming series on Disney+, Wright jumped at the chance to lead Loki, and he even originated a lot of the series’ eventual foundation.
“I wrote a 30-page pitch of what [Loki] could be. It had the TVA, He Who Remains and Victor Timely was even in there,” Wright tells The Hollywood Reporter. “And before we had writers, directors or anything, it was basically pitching it to Tom [Hiddleston], because he was very much like, ‘I don’t want to ruin this wonderful arc I’ve had for the last ten years. What exactly is this?’ So it was getting him excited about it.”
Now an executive producer on Loki season two, Wright isn’t ruling out a potential season three despite Disney CEO Bob Iger’s recent confirmation that Marvel would slow down its Disney+ output.
“Loki season two came in under budget and on time … We had zero additional photography, and we’re probably the first project ever at Marvel to do that,” Wright says. “Obviously, Loki still has a fairly healthy budget compared to most standard TV, and going forward, we would continue to look at that. How do we do these efficiently, but also so that we can have seasons three, four, five … ? The whole idea of long form is you want these to be sustaining, and I think we’re starting to find that in Loki and deliver on it. So I would certainly love to keep telling stories in this little corner of the universe we’ve made.”
Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Wright also discusses the freedom he’s had to make one of Marvel’s most well-received Disney+ series.
Well, you’ve got quite a life story. What’s the CliffsNotes’ version that results in you at Marvel?
Oh, the CliffsNotes’ version is hard. So I grew up in Philadelphia, and I was going to go to film school. Instead of doing that, I joined the Marine Corps. I was a combat photographer, videographer and documentarian. So I went to bootcamp in June 2001 and graduated Sept. 15, 2001, and a big thing happened in between there. So I served four years in the Marine Corps, got out and went to art school in Philadelphia, University of the Arts. It’s one of the oldest fine arts universities in the country, and as soon as I graduated [in 2012], I moved to L.A. and pursued a career in film.
I had a regular L.A. story of some internships and moving your way up the ranks. I was about to leave the industry and move back to Philadelphia because I was kind of over it. But then I got a call from an agent who said, “Hey, I got a meeting for you at Marvel, if you’d be interested in taking it. Can’t tell you what it is, but it’s exciting.” So I met with a couple executives from Marvel, and I was really intrigued about how they were going about their business. So it ended up as a job, and that was a little over eight years ago. I’ve been here ever since.
IMDb says you’ve been credited on roughly 21 Marvel projects in production and development. What did those responsibilities typically involve?
I certainly did not work on all of those projects I’m credited on, but there’s a number of creative development producers and managers and executives here at Marvel. I directly worked on Doctor Strange, as a production and development manager, and Ant-Man and the Wasp, but the last five years has been nothing but Loki, as a producer. Obviously, Kevin Feige can’t be everywhere, so usually there will be a manager and an executive and they’ll embed into that project from writing through delivery of the show, working very closely with the writers and directors. So those two movies were my crash course in, “Hey, here’s how we do business here.” But, yeah, it’s a little bit of everything. It’s a pretty unique position where you’re helping usher these stories along from development through delivery.
So Ant-Man and the Wasp was the big break that put you on a path towards becoming a full-fledged producer?
Yeah, I was an associate producer on that. We had a little bit of a room there, so I got to work very closely with [director] Peyton [Reed] and Paul [Rudd] and Stephen Broussard, who was the producer on that one. And at the end of that project, there was a path. We knew we were going to be breaking into streaming, and Loki was one of the first ideas, but there was no idea attached to it. It was like, “We might do a Loki series!” So at the time, there was a point where I could continue developing another Ant-Man project or I could go and lead on Loki. And I went, “Well, [Loki] seems like a pretty cool idea.” So we went down the Loki path, and I wrote a 30-page pitch of what it could be. It had the TVA, He Who Remains and Victor Timely was even in there. And before we had writers, directors or anything, it was basically pitching it to Tom [Hiddleston], because he was very much like, “I don’t want to ruin this wonderful arc I’ve had for the last ten years. What exactly is this?” So it was getting him excited about it and being like, “This is going to be a totally new long-form story and a totally new path for the character.”
You were co-executive producer on Loki season one, and then you were promoted to executive producer for season two. Based on season one and how successful it was, what was the ethos going into season two?
To try not to repeat ourselves. From the writing to Kate’s [Herron] contributions as director to our department heads, season one caught a little bit of lightning in a bottle, and so we said, “Even if we try to do the exact same thing and play the hits, you won’t be able to get there again.” So there was a sense of, “Let’s live in the moment of where our show ended and be true to our characters and live in the turmoil and drama and stakes that they have experienced through those first six episodes. Let’s not fast forward past that and let’s live in it.” That’s what this show and any of these long-form shows can do really well. So we wanted to go further with some of the time-loopy stuff and really push the sci-fi, but it was always grounded in not losing sight of these characters and why people love this.
Who do you usually report to when the higher-ups want to know how the day-to-day is going? Which crested blazer from the Marvel Studios Parliament would you call?
(Laughs.) We actually had very few phone calls. There was a lot of freedom to do this the way we wanted to. In between Loki season one and season two, Brad Winderbaum took over as head of streaming for Marvel, and he became a really trusted ally in all of this. I worked very closely with Stephen Brossard on Doctor Strange and Ant-Man and the Wasp, so he’s always a text away. I can be like, “What do you think about this?” But Brad really liked what we did on season one and was just a great ally. As we were developing scripts, he was a good sounding board, and Kevin [Feige] was always just the cheerleader, telling us to make it weirder and go further. So it was a really great process.
You weren’t the only person promoted from within, as 202’s director Dan DeLeeuw worked as the VFX supervisor on season one. Kasra Farahani served not only as the production designer on both seasons, but he also co-wrote and directed 203. What prompted you to take a shot on other department heads versus bringing in seasoned TV directors?
From the outset, I desperately wanted this show to be cinematic. That’s the TV that I like, and it’s a thing that you have to carve out from the top. You have to get buy-in from the top. So when we’re trying to build sets with ceilings, those are the things, internally, where I have to go and beg to do it. A huge part of the world building of season one was with Kasra, our production designer. So, early on, when Kate [Herron] was going to hand over the reins and step aside, I knew that I wanted to double down on the talent and the creatives who really understood the world and helped build it. And Kasra also has a story brain. He was a writer and director in his own right before this, and we invited him into the writers’ room as a staff writer. So he was hugely collaborative there, and we just knew that I could hand him the reins to direct and that he could deliver on that.
And Dan [DeLeeuw] was amazing. He came in towards the post-production process on season one, and he’s been Academy-nominated multiple times. [Writer’s Note: DeLeeuw shared best visual effects nominations for Avengers: Endgame, Avengers: Infinity War and Captain America: The Winter Soldier.] So we just wanted to bring him in and class it up a little bit. (Laughs.) And he also has such a story brain. We would be in these VFX reviews with Kate, Dan and myself, and he always approached it from Loki and Sylvie’s character point of views. It was never just, “What’s the coolest thing that we can make?” He had also done a number of second unit things for other Marvel projects, and it just felt like Dan and Kasra were steady hands who knew this world and these characters. And then bringing in [co-directors] Justin [Benson] and Aaron [Moorhead] was like, “How do we add some excitement and a fresh perspective so that we don’t just double down and make the same thing?”
203 is really great, and it reminded me a lot of The Prestige. It’s the same time period in the 1890s, so the production design and wardrobe are similar. There’s some thematic overlap, and there’s even manufactured lightning on a stage and some Tesla-like ambitions. Do you recall if that movie came up as a reference during the tone meeting?
Not overtly in any story ways, but once you go back to that era and once you are talking about Tesla and Edison and the World’s Fair, we certainly had some images on the wall. That’s one of those examples of just look and style, but [production designer] Kasra Farahani was pulling from everywhere. Isaac Bauman, who is our DP through five of the episodes, joined that one as well. He’s got a really hearty document, a 700-page document on building the look of the show, and it was certainly in there, too. So it was about trying to ground it in that reality, and sometimes, when you time-travel in a show, you can take on a bit of a kitschy look and feel or a skewed version of what those eras might’ve been. So, for us, it was just trying to make it feel as naturalistic as possible, and The Prestige did that well. So, yeah, of course, it’s a great reference point.
Obviously, the industry is in a weird place right now, and everyone is being more careful in regard to output and spend. So is season three still a possibility in your estimation?
I’m trying to think of how to say this so that I’m not revealing a season three. Loki season two came in under budget and on time: production budget, VFX budget, all of those things. We had zero additional photography, and we’re probably the first project ever at Marvel to do that. That’s the way filmmaking should be. There’s a responsibility to producing and developing these things on streaming that forced all of us on Loki to go, “We want this to look cinematic. How do we do it? How do we get it in the box? How do we put it on camera?” And that’s where restrictions bring out the best creativity. Obviously, Loki still has a fairly healthy budget compared to most standard TV, and going forward, we would continue to look at that. How do we do these efficiently, but also so that we can have seasons three, four, five … ? The whole idea of long form is you want these to be sustaining, and I think we’re starting to find that in Loki and deliver on it. So I would certainly love to keep telling stories in this little corner of the universe we’ve made.
Decades from now, when you’re reminiscing in front of a crackling fireplace, what day on a Marvel set will you likely recall first?
There’s so many, but the final day of shooting on Loki season one was really, really special. It was in the Citadel at the End of Time. We had all just weathered that first run of Covid, and we were one of the first productions in the world to get back up and running. And we just knew that we had made something special. It hadn’t been edited yet, but there was just a real sense of landing it. There’s some clips out there of Tom speaking to the crew and the rest of the cast. He literally went through every person in the room by name and thanked them for their contributions and called out memories that he had with them through the shoot. So it was just a really beautiful ending to that season, which is partially why we didn’t want to drop the ball on season two. Season one was so special for us and for the fans, and it was just like, “We’ve got to get back there and put our hearts and souls into it, because why else are we doing it?”
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Loki season two is now streaming on Disney+. This interview was edited for length and clarity.
