John Christopher Schulte (born 1959) is an American writer, director, and producer of animation, toys and entertainment properties. Schulte's oeuvre is infused within many iconic intellectual properties of the 1980s, 1990s and on into the 21st-century. Working as a developer and writer, he served on the development team for the wildly popular "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," which became a multi-billion dollar franchise internationally and has enjoyed several resurgences since its original inception by the comic book duo, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird.
He developed the short-lived but treasured original toy and animation property, B.C. Bikers, about a rogue band of "chrome age" dinosaurs who ride motorcycles through their prehistoric end times. He worked on interpolating the Troma feature film, "The Toxic Avenger" into an animated program for kids, called "Toxic Crusaders." Recently, he penned a script for an introductory animated series called "Gormiti": The Invincible Lords of Nature, based on the Italian toy phenomenon from Giochi Preziosi, which made its way to the United States via Playmates Toys, and debuted on Cartoon Network (United States) in 2009.
Schulte collaborates with his longtime writing partners, John C. Besmehn [1], Fred Fox Jr.[2], and his wife, Cheryl Ann Wong [3]. Their business is Pangea Corporation[4].
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John Schulte was born in 1959 in Dayton, Ohio, the birthplace of aviation. His father, Ralph W. Schulte Jr. (b.1928) was a former Marine and entrepreneur; his mother Pauline (1929–2007) was an executive secretary and homemaker, and his grandmother Alice Barnett (1907–1977) was a pianist for silent film. Schulte’s brother, Lee (b. 1951), is a German scholar, teacher, composer and writer. His sister, Betty (b. 1955), is a pharmacy technician. Schulte married Cheryl Ann Wong (b. 1960) in 1989 and they have one daughter, Blythe Abigail Su-Ren Schulte (b. 1997), a young actress, singer and aspiring conductress [5], who has performed with Carol Channing and is a student of Musical Theatre University.
Schulte moved from Ohio to Oklahoma City, whereupon he attended the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma. He studied film writing with his mentor, Arnost Lustig, and Dwight Swain, poetry with Pulitzer Prize winner Maya Angelou, fiction writing with Clayton Lewis and Jack Bickham, author of "The Apple Dumpling Gang," playwriting with Theodore Herstand and film making with Ned Hockman [6]. He was the editor-in-chief of Imbroglios, a literary magazine for the University of Oklahoma. Following his university days, he moved and settled in Southern California, attending the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute and the Hollywood Scriptwriting Institute. He also cut his teeth filling in dialogue for "Days of Our Lives" soap opera scripts and got his start writing for the toy and animation industry thanks to actor, screenwriter, Elliott Apstein, whose father coincidentally taught at the Lee Strasberg Theatre.
After leaving Oklahoma, where he worked for an educational software company, Schulte edited the books of self-help author, Arthur Mokarow, while collaborating on a script with Milos Foreman, based upon a short book penned by world chess champion, Bobby Fischer: "I Was Tortured in the Pasadena Jailhouse." When Fischer discovered Foreman was Jewish and Schulte was Catholic, the anti-Semite in him killed the development, though Schulte retained rights to the book. During this period, Schulte was also collaborating with EPA writer and editor, Jack Lewis, on an optioned Lizzie Borden script and a seminal work of John Kennedy Toole. Lewis, under the influence of prescribed psychotropic drugs, plummeted five floors to his death from his Washington, D.C. condo. Schulte was just completing editing his co-written teleplay, "Four Stars," written with screenwriter Kevin A. Mahoney, which was produced by Garry Marshall and directed by Lynda Goodfriend, starring actress Julie Paris and veteran actor Bert Kramer.
Schulte became part of the core development team at Dic Enterprises, an animation studio most noted for its Inspector Gadget series. While at Dic, Schulte worked on a plethora of properties, including "New Kids on the Block." As a writer and developer, Schulte has worked as liaison between animation, licensing and product development entities. He designed and product managed major toy lines from soup to nuts, including "Speed Racer", "Zorro," "Biker Mice from Mars," "Gormiti," "The Mask," "Mirmo," "Toonsylvania," "The Mummy," "Zorro: Generation Z," "Freedom Ops Net," "Penguins of Madagascar," and a plethora of others. Because of his work in software writing and development, he has also helped create progressive and innovative interactive products, such as the Amazing dolls from Playmates, Tamagotchi and Nano line extensions, Brian the Brain, Yano, Wittley, Bubba and a bevy of others.
During the dawn of the consumer internet, as companies like America Online made their way into pop culture, Schulte pioneered an internet community, creating and publishing online content for America Online (Toy Network) and Apple's eWorld (ToyNet); along with his business partners, the team launched debut websites for many major corporations (Bandai America, Speed Racer, DSI Toys, Blockmen, Whac-A-Mole and others).
Though he's authored, directed and produced a number of entertainment titles, including an award-winning video for kids called "Yoga Divas," Schulte has focused more and more on the conceptual, writing and creative development areas of entertainment and merchandising. He has worked on development and writing projects for a myriad of entities, ranging from toy companies to animation houses and entertainment studios.
He co-produced a teenage novel series with his brother, Lee, called Time Capsule Murders. The first book of the series, "Why Begins With W", was published in late 2009 under the pseudonyms Hamish De'Lamet and Chandral Ramon, by Potocki Press, an imprint of WingSpan. Schulte also completed work editing a self-help martial arts book, The 7 C's of Success, written by actor/director/martial artist, Shaunt Benjamin [7].
Schulte is collaborating with songwriter, singer and record producer Ron Dante on a new musical [8]; and he is writing with Edgar Award Winning author Barbara Brooks Wallace for a television show based on her "Miss Switch" book series. In early 2011 he started writing, design and development work on a new animated series based on secondary characters from the anime series, Speed Racer.