With Vincent D’Onofrio bouncing between projects and press cycles, it didn’t take long for a conversation about his FX/Hulu series “The Beauty” to drift back toward the role he’s made newly essential in Marvel’s street-level corner: Wilson Fisk. And when Michael DeAngelo, host of The Playlist’s Bingeworthy TV podcast, brought up the upcoming “Daredevil: Born Again” Season 2—D’Onofrio wound up fielding the kind of fandom-forward question that never really goes away once you’ve played a definitive version of an iconic villain: could his Wilson Fisk ever collide with Tom Holland’s Peter Parker on the big screen?
And more directly, will he appear in this summer’s “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” now that Fisk is the Mayor of New York City in the MCU, as the rumors suggest? Sorry, fandom, you’re going to have to wait.
“No. I think I’ll just wait until they have the rights to my character and they put me in one of those movies, and then I’ll figure it all out,” D’Onofrio said when asked if he’d imagine what a crossover would look like.
The interview ended from there; it had run out of time, regardless, but the answer is clear: there’s no upcoming ‘No Way Home’ appearance in the works because no deals or rights have been worked out yet.
What does that mean exactly? Well, for one, D’Onofrio likely only has a deal with Marvel Television at the moment for “Daredevil: Born Again,” and if they’re going to have him appear in a feature-length film, they’d have to cut a new deal for that.
Moreover, people tend to forget in these wish-fulfillment scenarios that “Spider-Man” is owned by Sony Pictures, so every time a Marvel character shows up in one of their movies, a new agreement has to be drawn up and negotiated, one with Marvel and then probably one with Sony; it’s complicated.
Two Marvel actors are already appearing in ‘Brand New Day’: Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner (rumored to be the Gray Hulk this time) and Jon Bernthal as The Punisher, that we know of; there may be more.
And four Disney-owned MCU characters showed up in “Spider-Man: No Way Home”: Doctor Strange, Wong, Matt Murdock, and Agent P. Cleary, the latter being a TV-first actor from “Ms. Marvel,” so these deals can be done. But D’Onofrio’s isn’t for some reason. And or, writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers didn’t really have a part for him, so rather than force a cameo, Marvel just left it.
It’s also possible that some other legal loopholes aren’t out there on the surface. Hulk, for instance, is still owned by Universal, so he cannot lead his own movie. Namor used to have Universal issues as well, but seemingly those hurdles were cleared during ‘Wakanda Forever.’
Whatever the case, don’t expect the Kingpin and Peter Parker or Spider-Man to connect just yet.
More from this interview soon. — Additional reporting by Mike DeAngelo.
