One thing that always puzzled me since the acquisition of Midway Games by WB Games is that the Chicago studio, home of the Mortal Kombat team, was the only studio to not have some official name and website to call home beyond the generic WB Games Chicago title. The other Midway studio that Warners purchased in Seattle retook it's old name of Surreal Software. As well the two other studios that Warners purchased that were not part of Midway also retain their old names: Snowblind Studios and Monolith Productions. Most development teams have some form of official name across the industry, and beyond being called "The MK Team" they haven't had some official title.

Then today I noticed a new website that went up recently, WBGamesJobs.com. What I found interesting was that it features the Mortal Kombat Dragon logo promiently on the page along with the other studio logos. Also of note is that all the job listings on the site name the studios the listing belongs to, with exception for Chicago which say "WB Games in Chicago."

Could this mean the WB Games Chicago studio will be getting a new name of it's own related to Mortal Kombat? My guess is something along the lines of Mortal Kombat Studios. Could they also get a website similar to the other studios to go along with the name for all game announcements and news? I haven't yet been able to find any signs or recently registered domain names that point us to the possible studio name. All I know the "Kommunity" would love to have one central place to call home, since the Threshold Entertainment owned MortalKombat.com has been inactive for close to a decade.

Another far fetched option to rebrand them Midway Games. Warner Bros does own the now defunct midway.com domain but it's unlikely the Chicago studio would adopt this title as they didn't purchase the "Midway Games" naming rights in the purchase of the Chicago studio. Unless they pick up the name as part of Midway's final liquidation is complete. But the Midway logos were removed from the studio's walls at the end of August 2009, it would have been a waste of money to have to put it all back up now. But it would allow the Midway legacy to continue.

I have a feeling that they will ge a real name soon, Mortal Kombat related or not, as the hype machine for Mortal Kombat 9 should be starting up soon to meet the targeted Christmas 2010 release date.

The Mortal Kombat Development team has been working hard on Mortal Kombat 9 for over a year now. A big part of the development of the game is getting the cinematic scenes together for the game. If Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe is any indication of what the assembled team is capable of, I expect the cinematics to be top notch in the next game. To develop the cinematic scenes they have certain actors do the voices for the characters and then they have another set of actors actually act out the motions to the previously recorded voices. Some may do both, but the two point process is used to get the performances captured just as the director wants. As this work has been progressing some unintentional casting leaks have been made.

First last month it was discovered that voice actress Dana Lyn Baron noted on her blog that she reprised her role as the voice of Sonya Blade for Mortal Kombat 9. That bit of text has since been removed, probably at the request of Warner Bros, but the Google cache still has the original text:

In September — right before I left for Paris & the South of France — I reprised my role as Sonya Blade for Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment’s next installment of the MORTAL KOMBAT videogame.

TRMK Forum member Tim Static later discovered that the Post Tribune of Northwest Indiana wrote an article on actress Brenda Barrie. Brenda lent her acting skills to the motion capture of both Catwoman and Wonder Woman for Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. In the article in addition to discussing the current theatre productions she's taking part in, it also mentioned that she did work on the upcoming Mortal Kombat 9 but didn't get into specifics.

Still, she has side ventures outside of the stage that include character portrayal in Warner Bros.' "Mortal Kombat 9" video game, which has not been released yet.

Several shoots for it are on the horizon this year.

"They gave me a script," said Barrie, alluding to a facet of her job.

It's all about "capturing authentic movement," the heralded performer from the Robertsdale section of Hammond related.

"I might get in and out of fight poses," explained Barrie, who also called Whiting home for part of her youth.

After this was discovered FDMK found that Barrie had "Katana" listed as her character name on her website's resume. This is easily a mistake as she likely meant Kitana. Along with that she also listed that the game is to be released on 12/25/2010 which is the timeframe we reported in December of last year. It also was soon removed, along with the rest of her website contents as well. You can see a picture of the original website below:

Further digging by InsideMK finds that her IMDb resume lists that her next job for Warner Bros. will will be announced in "April 2010." So that could possibly mean that more will be revealed about Mortal Kombat 9 sometime next month. It would make sense to start teasing the game this spring, before E3 2010 in June.

We also did some digging and found that another motion capture actor Sorin Brouwers is also returning per his resume (now removed, bad link). Now while Sorin played Green Lantern, Kano & Scorpion in the last game that doesn't imply he'll be bringing those characters back.

Thanks to the many fans who sent us updates on this information. Also thanks again to the MK Kommunity for helping collecting all this information, especially: FDMK, Inside MK, MK Universe, and MK Online. Hopefully, as noted above, we may see more news coming sometime next month so stay tuned!

Update 3:10pm: It appears that Sorin Brouwers removed his resume. I would think his would be safe since he didn't unveil anything specific. The image from the resume remains above as pictured.

Update 2 - Ed Boon posted to Twitter a cryptic "9 + 25 = FALSE" over the weekend. This is obviously related to the mentioned release of 12/25 for Mortal Kombat 9. It makes perfect sense that the release date isn't going to be on Christmas day as it's both a national holiday and a weekend, and most games are released to retail on Tuesdays. As we originally stated it's possible the team has a target to have the game released by the Christmas season. This could be late November or early December like the release of Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe.

The digital age of movies has arrived. With Internet video services streaming movies directly to TVs, physical media such as DVDs and Blu-ray Discs are becoming less of a factor. The true value in these streaming services is that they bring out of print or poorly distributed movies to a much greater audience. Arriving fashionably late to this game is the video game cult-classic Mortal Kombat.

Netflix has added Mortal Kombat to it's ever growing Watch Instantly catalog of streaming movies to your computer or TV. If you're a subscriber, you're a mere few clicks away from watching one of the biggest movies of 1995 and arguably one of the better video game movie adaptations.

Have you recently re-watched the Mortal Kombat movie? Let us know if it has withstood the test of time and was as good as you remembered.