In addition to Max Payne, Perkins and Miller have helped develop highly successful game franchises including Duke Nukem, Prey, Doom, Blood, and Shadow Warrior. Together, their games have sold more than 35 million units globally. The pair have also founded, expanded, and sold three successful publishing companies—Arush Entertainment, to a foreign-distribution company in 2004; Gathering of Developers, to Take-Two Interactive in 2000; and FormGen, to GT Interactive in 1996—generating a combined $1.5 billion.

They’ve invested some of those proceeds into Radar, which has three games in development: Earth No More, an environmental-disaster action story; Prey 2, an alien-invasion game with a Native American protagonist; and Incarnate, a horror story in which evil must be hunted down and imprisoned (and whose concept came from Hollywood screenwriter Frank Hannah, who wrote The Cooler).

Usually, a movie based on a game gets green-lit only after the game has been released and built an audience. But Depth Entertainment is already shopping Radar’s stories around to studios—even though the games are still a few years away from hitting shelves. Merchandising and expanding an intellectual property from the get-go has been a long-standing Hollywood strategy, but the concept is still new in the game business, where all the focus generally remains on creating the game.

The typical game developer turns to a publisher to cover the costs of producing a game and subsequently surrenders ownership of that property. Once the game recoups the publisher’s loan, the developer begins to earn royalties. Radar is instead taking original ideas, partnering each with a game developer—it will work only with independent shops like Human Head Studios and Recoil Games—and then cutting distribution deals with publishers. The startup is working with retained adviser Gallipo Group, a new videogame venture-capital company, and expects to have $90 million in funding by this May.

By 2011, Radar plans on releasing three or four games per year, with eight to 12 projects in development at any one time. The franchises are expected to launch on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 platforms and gradually expand to Wii, Nintendo DS, and PSP.

One thing the company principals won’t ever do is license a Hollywood property. They’ll leave that task to companies like Brash Entertainment, which is sinking all of its funding into movie properties like Saw, Speed Racer, and Space Chimps. Miller believes that’s a doomed enterprise. But without a Hollywood association to fall back on, Radar’s games will have to be stellar to win over fans.

Coming soon to a theater near you? If the story’s good enough, yes.