Could Kingpin Finally Fight Spider-Man? Vincent D’Onofrio Says One Thing Is Standing in the Way

For years, the idea of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin facing Tom Holland’s Spider-Man has existed in that frustrating space between comic-book logic and Hollywood reality. On paper, it makes almost too much sense. On screen, the path is considerably more complicated.

D’Onofrio has now made clear that he would like to see it happen. Responding to a fan asking about a live-action confrontation between Wilson Fisk and Spider-Man, the actor pointed directly at the unusual relationship between Marvel and Sony as the obstacle. As Variety reported, D’Onofrio described it as a complicated rights issue while making equally clear that he hopes the two sides can eventually make the crossover possible.

It is a tantalising possibility because Kingpin currently occupies one of the most interesting positions in Marvel’s street-level world. Daredevil: Born Again has returned D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk and Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock to the centre of New York’s vigilante story, while Spider-Man remains the MCU’s most famous neighbourhood hero.

The question is no longer whether Kingpin belongs in a Spider-Man story. He always has. The question is whether the modern film-rights arrangement will ever allow these particular versions of the characters to collide.

Kingpin was a Spider-Man villain first

It is easy to forget how deep the connection actually runs. Modern audiences often think of Wilson Fisk primarily as Daredevil’s great adversary, especially after D’Onofrio’s performance transformed the character into one of Marvel television’s most memorable villains.

But Fisk did not begin in the pages of Daredevil. Marvel’s own Kingpin history traces his first appearance to The Amazing Spider-Man #50 in 1967. The character entered Marvel Comics as a New York crime lord challenging Spider-Man long before his rivalry with Matt Murdock became the relationship that would define him for many readers.

That history matters. A confrontation between Holland’s Peter Parker and D’Onofrio’s Fisk would not be an artificial cinematic-universe crossover invented simply to put two popular actors in the same scene. It would restore one of Kingpin’s oldest comic-book relationships.

Kingpin versus Spider-Man would not be Marvel forcing two worlds together. It would be two parts of the same New York crime story finally meeting on screen.

Born Again makes the idea more interesting

The current version of Wilson Fisk is particularly well suited to a Spider-Man conflict because his power is no longer confined to the criminal underworld. In Daredevil: Born Again, Fisk’s political ambitions place him in a position where law, public authority and organised crime can overlap.

That changes the shape of the threat. Spider-Man has fought villains who can overpower him physically, but Fisk is most dangerous when defeating him is not as simple as winning a fight. A Kingpin with institutional power can make vigilantism itself the issue.

For Matt Murdock, that conflict is deeply personal. Daredevil understands Fisk’s methods, his capacity for manipulation and the violence beneath his public persona. Peter Parker would enter the same conflict from a different direction: younger, more improvisational and carrying the complicated public legacy of Spider-Man.

That contrast is precisely why the characters work so well around the same villain. Fisk can threaten Daredevil through Matt Murdock’s legal and personal world while challenging Spider-Man through New York itself.

And Spider-Man’s world is becoming more street-level again

The timing is also difficult to ignore. After the multiversal scale of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter Parker was left in a radically different position. The world no longer remembers Peter Parker, his closest relationships have been severed, and the character has effectively been returned to a more isolated version of the neighbourhood hero.

That creates fertile territory for villains who do not need portals, alien armies or collapsing universes to be dangerous.

The next chapter, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, keeps speculation around that street-level direction alive. The presence of Jon Bernthal’s Punisher in the film is especially intriguing because Frank Castle already belongs to the same corner of Marvel storytelling occupied by Daredevil and Kingpin.

The official Spider-Man social channels have continued to position the new film as Peter Parker’s next major chapter. Readers can follow the franchise directly through the official Spider-Man movie Instagram account, where Sony and the film’s campaign publish current material around the character and his cinematic world.

None of that confirms Kingpin. It should not be treated as evidence that D’Onofrio is secretly appearing in the movie. But it does demonstrate how much closer Marvel’s previously separated street-level characters now feel.

The Punisher may be the bridge

Jon Bernthal’s presence makes the situation even more interesting. Frank Castle has history with Matt Murdock, operates in the same violent New York ecosystem as Fisk, and now crosses directly into Spider-Man’s film world.

That does not automatically mean Daredevil or Kingpin follows him. But from a storytelling perspective, Punisher demonstrates that the boundary between Marvel’s television-rooted street-level characters and Sony’s Spider-Man films is not completely impermeable.

If Frank Castle can enter Peter Parker’s world, audiences are inevitably going to ask who could follow.

Daredevil is the obvious answer. Kingpin may be the more interesting one.

Why D’Onofrio’s Kingpin would work against Tom Holland

D’Onofrio’s Fisk has always worked because the performance resists the temptation to make Kingpin merely enormous and intimidating. His violence can be shocking, but the character’s real menace comes from control. He wants to dominate rooms, institutions and eventually the city around him.

Holland’s Peter Parker is almost his opposite. Peter survives through movement, instinct, humour and an inability to stop helping people even when doing so makes his own life worse.

Put those personalities together and the physical mismatch becomes less important than the ideological one.

Fisk believes power should be accumulated and controlled. Peter repeatedly gives up power, security and personal happiness because he believes responsibility matters more.

And unlike many of Spider-Man’s cinematic villains, Fisk does not require a complicated introduction. Audiences already know him. Daredevil, Hawkeye and Born Again have done years of character work. A Spider-Man story could simply allow Peter Parker to encounter the consequences of Fisk’s power.

There is still one very real problem

This is where D’Onofrio’s comment matters more than fan speculation.

Spider-Man’s film rights remain with Sony, while Marvel Studios has developed D’Onofrio’s current Kingpin through its own interconnected television and streaming projects. The studios have repeatedly found ways to collaborate around Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, but that does not mean every Marvel character can simply move across the boundary whenever a story calls for it.

D’Onofrio’s response is therefore interesting because it acknowledges something fans often overlook. Creative logic is only one part of modern franchise filmmaking. Contracts, rights and studio relationships can be every bit as decisive as what makes sense for the characters.

The actor clearly wants the confrontation. The comic-book history supports it. The current versions of both characters make it unusually attractive.

But wanting it and being able to make it are different things.

Maybe that is why fans keep asking

Kingpin versus Spider-Man has become one of those Marvel possibilities that feels increasingly obvious precisely because it has not happened.

D’Onofrio has spent years turning Wilson Fisk into a character capable of moving between intimate crime drama and the wider MCU. Holland’s Spider-Man has reached a point where returning to New York’s streets may be more interesting than immediately escalating back toward another universe-threatening event.

And somewhere between them sits Daredevil — a character with deep connections to both sides of the equation and a renewed life through Born Again.

The pieces are there.

For now, however, D’Onofrio has identified the piece audiences cannot solve with theories: the business arrangement behind the characters.

If Marvel and Sony eventually find a way through it, Spider-Man meeting Kingpin would feel less like another cameo designed to surprise an audience and more like something Marvel’s New York has been moving toward for decades.

After all, before Wilson Fisk became the man who could make Matt Murdock’s life collapse, he was already waiting in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man.