In 1983, Stewart Copeland would compose the musical score and earn a Golden Globe nomination for his scoring of Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish. The film directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola from the S.E. Hinton novel also had a song released to radio on A & M Records "Don't Box Me In - Theme From Rumblefish" - a collaboration between Copeland and singer/songwriter Stan Ridgway, leader of the band Wall of Voodoo, that received significant airplay upon release of the film that year.

After The Police stopped touring in 1984, Copeland established a career composing soundtracks for movies (Talk Radio, Wall Street, See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Highlander 2, The Leopard Son, Taking Care of Business, West Beirut, I am David), television (The Equalizer, Dead Like Me, Droids, the animated Star Wars spin-off, the original pilot for Babylon 5), and video games (Spyro the Dragon), along with operas (Holy Blood and Crescent Moon) and ballets.