Sony had a problem. Marvel had a problem. Spider-Man had a problem, but all three figured out a way to potentially solve them. The Webslinger is coming to the MCU, which opens him up to a slew of new sidekicks, supporting players, and villains. And one new enemy under the Marvel umbrella already is stepping up and saying he’d love a crack at Peter Parker.
Marvel’s getting ready to unveil a brand new Daredevil via a full season of a new Netflix series (which drops on April 10). And with that series comes a refreshing take on the classic Marvel baddie, The Kingpin, played by the menacing Vincent D’Onofrio. Well, now the actor tells IGN that he hopes his show can cross over with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, because he’d finally love to see Spidey and Kingpin go head to head. D’Onofrio says:
That would be super-cool, yeah. To be able to kick Spider-Man’s butt would be awesome. But we just don’t know about those things. Those are all the Marvel secrets that they never tell us until they need us, so… Yeah, I would do it. I would do it in second.
So far, Kingpin has been used as a Daredevil antagonist on screen, first in the Ben Affleck movie (where he was played by the late Michael Clarke Duncan), and now in the DD television series. But that overlooks some classic Kingpin stories that surfaced in the Spider-Man comic books. Web-head's conflicts with the Kingpin of Crime were the stuff of legend, and one way for Marvel to hit a home run on its first pass at a solo Spider-Man movie would be to shrink the scope of the Spidey universe, have him lock horns with D’Onofrio’s Kingpin, and possibly let Charlie Cox’s Daredevil tag along for the ride.
It only makes sense that, in time, the Marvel television properties start to inform the movies. We already are seeing ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. have an impact on certain movie projects, and I think that will extend with next month’s The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Spider-Man is a new addition to the MCU (and a welcome one, at that), and the studio is in a wonderful place because they got a headstart by already introducing a new Kingpin and a new Daredevil, albeit through the Netflix side of the equation.
So far, Daredevil has been getting off-the-charts positive reviews, with our own Eric Eisenberg saying that D’Onofrio’s Kingpin delivers "a wonderfully affectatious performance that shows a skilled balance between weakness and strength." Do you eventually want to see Kingpin going off on the newest Spider-Man? Weigh in below!
