[1][3] After completing the graduate film program, Murphy teamed with Jane Hamsher to produce Natural Born Killers based on a script written by Quentin Tarantino, who was then unknown.

Director Oliver Stone committed to direct the film, and he installed Murphy and Hamsher as on-set producers, which was described as "the equivalent of a crash course in filmmaking".

[8] Murphy and producer Tom DeSanto optioned rights to the Transformers toy line from Hasbro and pitched it to Hollywood studios.

According to Murphy, the studios passed initially, but then began to express interest after further internal meetings involving younger staff, from the generation who had played with Transformers in their childhood.

However, the forum remained Murphy's personal project, rather than an official site for the film, partly due to his corporate partners' unease about how the website might be perceived.