Chandler High alum wrote story for first Ninja Turtles film

Bobby Herbeck says it’s the surprises that kept him in business.

The idea of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ live-action movie doing well in theaters in the spring of 1990 wasn’t a surprise to Herbeck and the film’s other writers — but it was a surprise to the studio.

“Writers and directors are often more optimistic than studios,” Herbeck said. “We thought the film would do well. But we didn’t know it would do ‘that’ well.”

The TMNT franchise had gone from popular comic books to a household name with the animated series that debuted in 1987, so it was unclear to some how well a movie would be received.

Herbeck wrote the story for the film that used the characters developed by Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman in the mid-1980s. The 1990 film would eventually lead to eight Ninja Turt