The King of Fighters 2009 (2009) was released during the same year as both Tekken: Hegemony (2009) and Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009), the three movies were panned by fans and critics alike for being low-budget films, with bad casting, and are weak adaptations of popular arcade fighting-games from Japan.
American actor Will Yun Lee has similarities to Fatal Fury/The King of Fighters character Kim Kaphwan, unlike his character Iori Yagami. Similarities such as Kim and Lee both being Korean, they are both taekwondo experts, and they are both at the billed height of 5 ft 9 in (175 cm).
This film is loosely based on the game The King of Fighters '98: The Slugfest (1998) which is a reboot of the four previous chapters in The Orochi Saga from SNK's best-selling fighting game franchise.
In the movie, Mai Shinarui is depicted as an undercover CIA operative and a girlfriend of Iori Yagami; wears a blue frilly-but-sleeveless low-cut dress, and black lingerie with thigh-high leather boots; her measurements are a petite 30A-22-32 / 78A-56-81 in cm; and teams up with men instead of women much like how she joined Terry Bogard's Fatal Fury Team in KOF '99. Mai's canon depiction in the games however: she is a Kunoichi (Female Ninja) of the Shiranui clan and the self-proclaimed "fiancée" to fellow Shiranui-ryuu Ninja student Andy Bogard (who happens to be Terry's younger brother); she wears a sleeveless red uwagi with a decorative waistband--sometimes with long, decorative tails, a red loincloth with a bikini-bottom underneath, completed with a pair of soft-soled tabi; her measurements were originally 34F-22-36 / 88F-55-91 in cm, Mai is also a frequent member of the Women's Fighting Team after getting rejected by Team Fatal Fury during The King of Fighters: Orochi Saga.
Abigail Mavity as Yuri Sakazaki, Emma Lahana as King, Kane Kosugi as K' and Roger Fan as Alba Meira were all rumor to appear in the film as characters from 2004 games such as The King of Fighters Neowave and The King of Fighters: Maximum Impact.