Ed Boon has been busy as a beaver, updating his Twitter account. There's been a flurry of activity over the last day or two in regards to the next installment of Mortal Kombat. Here are some of the more interesting quotes from his Twitter account:

Done with mocap, done with casting auditions...how the hell did it get to be 5:30 so fast?

Listening to casting auditions in the sound dept.

Now we're capturing animations for John Vogel.

Capturing some of Paulo's ideas now.

Tony Z. Rick O. and Carlos P. in the new/old mocap studio.

Meeting on our new fighting feature spilled over into lunch hour. Gonna have soup in my office and prep for this afternoon's mocap.

We are doing motion capture today in the new/old mocap studio.

Long, long, day..We motion captured 14 fatalities today. I think thats a record for us !!

He also supplied us with this photograph:


And yet another big thanks go to for keeping us posted on this one.

Ed Boon's Twitter account sure is active lately. Now, he has posted a screenshot of a previously unrevealed character from MK: Deadly Alliance. This one is a male vampire character with wild blue hair, who was never 100% completed. From Ed Boon himself:

Cutting Room Floor - Nitara from Deadly Alliance originally had a male counterpart but we decided not to finish him

To read Ed's tweet directly, just go here. A huge thanks go to for yet another News Lead!

The folks over at GameSpot have posted a story in their Rumor Control section, and it seems pretty legit. Essentially, this story broke because a number of former Midway employees have updated their LinkedIn profiles so that they now read "WB Games Chicago" instead of "Midway Games".

While GameSpot's calls were not returned, one of the LinkedIn profiles reportedly reads:

"I work at WB Games Chicago (used to be Midway Games Chicago) on the Mortal Kombat team."

To read the full article on GameSpot, click here. Their main source was a page on SuperAnnutation, which can be found here.

Ed Boon posted on his Twitter page a screenshot which reveals some more lost kontent - this time around, an early design of Mavado MK: Deadly Alliance. Boon's words:

Here is a cutting-room-floor design of Mavado from MKDA. Looked too much like a matador.

To go directly to Ed's Twitter comment, click here. Our gratitude to samus_aran3900 for spreading the word!

Ed Boon posted yet another image on his Twitter page, this time a swamp level that almost made its way into MK: Deadly Alliance. Ed's words:

• This SWAMP arena was ultimately cut from the lineup in Deadly Alliance but was modeled sans textures.
• ...I have a TON of cutting room floor stuff and if you guys seem to enjoy it I'm happy 2
• This was an arena by the GREAT Tony Goskie....BTW.

To read the quote on Ed's Twitter account directly, go here, here, and here. Our thanks go to for the word on this update!

Ed Boon posted on his Twitter page a screenshot which reveals some more lost kontent - a Soul Chamber level that almost made it in to Midway's famed basketball series, NBA Hangtime. From the horse's mouth:

These images were going to be used in a "hidden MK court" for one of Midway's NBA Jam/Hangtime home ports. But the NBA said no. :(

To read the quote on Ed's page directly, go here. Our thanks go to Kombat19 for the word on this update!

Midway has announced the closing of their Chicago Headquarters, and as rumored, also announced the layoffs of all employees within. Likely in the final stages, this move coupled with the layoffs of the San Diego studio as well as the Newcastle, UK studio marks the end of several pieces of the company's history.

A form filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission outlined the scope of the Chicago HQ layoffs, which account for about 20 percent of the remaining global workforce of Midway, which still exists as a company. The form also revealed that, as a result of last week's sale, said company will be writing off $69 million to $76 million in debt: $25 million to $30 million of development costs and $3 million to $5 million of fixed assets--aka items like buildings, which can't be easily liquidated. Midway is also writing down $41 million of impaired goodwill, or the value of assets Midway held that were reduced or eliminated as a result of the Warner Bros. buyout.

This move however will not affect the nearby development studios, which are now the property of Warner Bros. As stated before, WB has acquired most of Midway's assets, most notably the Mortal Kombat franchise and the development studio in which it is created. The 100 or so MK team members will continue work on the tentatively titled Mortal Kombat 9 as scheduled.

To read more about this story at Gamespot, click here.

Our thanks to for the lead on this story.

Ed Boon has gone ahead and updated his Twitter page with a render of Quan Chi, along with the following note:

Excited about MK9 and WB, but wish we could have released DLC for MKvsDC. Here's a peek.

Ed's other comment indicates that Quan Chi and Harley Quinn were being worked on together; therefore, we may get her render next.

Thanks to MK Online forum member dracine for posting about this in our message board, as well as insidious_t for the News Lead.

After months of speculation and legal maneuverings, the sale of Mortal Kombat developer/publisher Midway Games is finally going through. Within the past day, the court overseeing the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Midway noted that there were no other bidders for Midway's assets, so the only bidder for the company was Warner Bros.. In addition, all objections to the sale (including Threshold's question over IP rights and Vin Diesel's Tigon Entertainment questions about owed payments) were resolved, clearing the way for Warner Bros. to purchase the company. From the Chicago Tribune article:

Warner Bros. had submitted a $33 million bid to buy "substantially all" the assets of Chicago-based Midway. If there had been other bids, the court would have supervised an auction. But no other parties submitted competing bids, Midway stated in a Tuesday court filing.

...

The judge said Wednesday that the objections to the Warner Bros. deal were resolved, clearing the way for the approval.

Midway's creditors and Thomas agreed in early June to give Thomas a $5 million payment. He bought media magnate Sumner Redstone's 87 percent stake in the video-game manufacturer for $100,000 last year and also assumed $70 million in Midway debt originally owed to National Amusements, Redstone's movie theater chain.

Thomas' secured claim in the Midway bankruptcy was $30 million. He also had a $40 million unsecured claim that is eliminated as part of the settlement.

The only real word on the opinion of the MK developers regarding this development is something Ed Boon said on his Twitter to TRMK's Patrick McCarron: "looking forward to the focus being on the games, making them better and less on the noise surrounding us."

With this development in place, it seems Midway's financial future seems to be more secure. We'll report more as we learn it.

To read the Chicago Tribune story in its entirety, click here.