D’Onofrio To Be Kingpin In Daredevil Series

Today, Marvel Studios officially announced Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk for Netflix’s upcoming Daredevil series.  Wilson Fisk, better known as The Kingpin, is a long-enduring villain in the Daredevil mythos and other Marvel properties (The Punisher and Spider-Man).

The Kingpin’s fictional character biography reads like a profile for modern day mob bosses.  Bullied, due to his obesity, while growing up poor in New York City, Fisk quickly found strength through fight training.  One by one, he’s able to recruit, through intimidation, his former bullies into his own gang.  Fisk’s growing influence would be noticed by crime boss Don Rigoletto, who eventually hires Fisk to be his bodyguard and confidant.  Through a series of events, Fisk kills Rigoletto and rises to become a powerful figure in New York’s organized crime syndicate.

Vincent D’Onofrio, most famous for portraying troubled Private Leonard Lawrence in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, has had a successful career in both film and television since the early-eighties.  His longest running stint has been on the highly successful Law & Order: Criminal Intent where he played Detective Robert Goren.  A fun fact and trivia is that Daredevil won’t be D’Onofrio’s first connection to Marvel.  In 1987’s Adventures in Babysitting, he played Dawson the mechanic — a man who a comic book-obsessed girl thinks bears a striking resemblance to the God of Thunder himself — Thor.

This will be the third live-action incarnation of The Kingpin.  The first was in 1989’s television movie The Trial of the Incredible Hulk where John Rhys-Davies played the mob boss.  The second was in 2003’s Daredevil starring Ben Affleck as the Man without Fear.  In this version, The Kingpin was played by the late and great Michael Clarke Duncan of The Green Mile fame.

Daredevil, starring Charlie Cox in the titular role and starting production this summer, will be one of four Marvel/Netflix shows centered around events taking place in Hell’s Kitchen.  The other three will be Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and Jessica Jones.  Like the cinematic universe, all four characters from each show will later converge together in a miniseries event called The Defenders — another superhero team akin to The Avengers.