Vincent D’Onofrio wants Kingpin to get his own Joker

As far as comic book supervillains go, it’s hard to get more grounded than Wilson “Kingpin” Fisk. Sure, Fisk is huge and strong, and both fast and well-trained enough to catch many of his more “fit” opponents off guard. But he throws punches, not fireballs, and any good Kingpin story also makes it clear that the man’s real danger lies in the same arenas as almost any real-world villain: His money, and the power it allows him to impose upon the world.

Still, he does spend more time than your average businessman/crime boss smacking around leather-clad do-gooders, and so we can kind of understand why actor Vincent D’Onofrio might want a change of pace. Hence an interview the once-and-future Fisk gave to Comicbook.com last week, shortly after the release of his Disney+ series Echo, where he expresses a desire for a new kind of Kingpin story: A more realistic one, in the style of Todd Phillips’ Joker, with a bigger focus on human elements, and without all these damn superheroes getting in the way.

Here’s D’Onofrio’s pitch:

I would love to do, like a, What If…? kind of Fisk story. I would just like to explore him outside of the usual teaming up of villain and superhero. I’d like to see a truly more realistic version, kind of like what they did with the Joker … A more interior approach and you know, 10 times darker than anything we’ve done with him before. You know, exploring that would be really interesting.

And while you could, again, argue that many of D’Onofrio’s scenes as the character—especially in the now semi-canon first season of Netflix’s Daredevil show—already approach that idea in terms of both realism and darkness, we can’t deny that what the actor is pitching doesn’t have a certain appeal. Part of the genius of his portrayal (which he’ll also be reprising in the upcoming Daredevil: Born Again, whenever Disney gets done extensively retooling it) comes from the very human notes D’Onofrio lends to the character, whether it’s Fisk’s capacity for warmth to the people he loves, or his boundless reserves of rage. Seeing him dive deeper into those elements, without the need to have him try to bear hug a man in a devil costume to death every couple of episodes, might make for a hell of a one-shot.