Jamee Natella is a veteran film producer and professional storyteller who is now putting her skills to bold new use, creating stories of exploration and thought-expansion for a younger generation.
Photo credit: Evin Grant
Recently, new technological developments have dramatically changed how young people spend their free time. In decades past, childhood memories were filled with playing outside, riding bicycles with friends, and long stretches of idle boredom.
But as a substantial amount of data has demonstrated, boredom is actually essential to thought. If external forces are constantly stimulating your brain, then there’s little time for introspection or articulate consideration. This has become a problem for adults today as well, but it weighs far more heavily on children, as their brains are still developing in essential ways.
As such, works of entertainment that engage the younger generation and provoke thought, rather than simply spoon-feeding surface-level thrills, are immensely important, and this is part of why Jamee Natella is turning her attention to Worldride Adventures and Worldride Impact. These entertainment-based ventures create character-led storytelling works, engineered to target Gen Alpha audiences, while also providing tangible opportunities for children to experience other cultures through travel grants, libraries, technology, arts, sports, cooking, and other programs.
About Jamee Natella
Natella was raised in Chicago and educated at the Chicago Academy for the Arts. From an early age, she was extremely passionate about storytelling as a craft, which inspired her to move to Los Angeles. She built an early production career with major studios, including Warner Brothers and Touchstone Pictures.
Then, in 1995, Natella was offered the opportunity to executive produce Benicio Del Toro’s directorial debut, Submission, by the acclaimed actor and director himself. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and launched her career to a whole new level.
This led Natella to produce the Japanese talk show Teatime for Tokyo Broadcasting System and to launch Blueyed Pictures in 1998, a global production and media company with bases in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and London. As a certified women-owned business, Blueyed Pictures is partnered with IPG and EDC in the search for a naming rights partner for NYC Ferry.
International Interest
Because of the international nature of her work and producing across multiple continents, travel has become a large part of Natella’s life, alongside her son. Ultimately, her son’s curiosity about different cultures and continents inspired her to create Worldride Adventures.
Natella details, “While traveling, he would ask me questions such as ‘why do they drive on the opposite side of the road in London?’ and ‘why do they use chopsticks instead of forks in Japan?’ As his curiosity grew, I found that the resources around us were limited… This made me realize how limited the market was and inspired me to create Worldride Adventures and Worldride Impact. I believe every child deserves access to the world—through travel, storytelling, and cultural education.”
Worldride Adventures and Worldride Impact
The goal of Natella’s new companies is to blend real places with magical storytelling, giving kids the courage to explore and the joy of belonging anywhere, turning travel and culture into something kids want to wear, trade, and show off, not just something they learn.
Additionally, Natella writes books for Worldride Adventures, aimed at a similar audience and meant to nurture similar interests. Sam in London; Cheeky Kids, Medieval Blokes, and Giant Trousers is the first book in the travel series, which strives to make cultural discovery as stylish as fashion, as playful as gaming, and as emotionally resonant as Pixar.
Final Thoughts
Today, Jamee Natella still works across multiple mediums to help expand the audience palette. Blueyed Pictures’ new film is Moral Capacity, a thriller directed by Brad Anderson and starring Dacre Montgomery. Natella has also continued working as a hired producer on projects outside Blueyed Pictures, including The Last Firefighter, directed by Sean McNamara, produced by SP Media and set for release on Paramount Global’s platform. Most recently, she produced Christmas Family Feud for SP Media and Paramount Pictures, which wrapped last month and is due for release later this year. Natella has further installments in Worldride Adventures’ book series on the way.
Through her work at Worldride Adventures and Worldride Impact, Natella and her team strive to inspire curiosity, lower social anxiety around travel, and turn real places into playgrounds of magic. This way, they offer a more substantial form of entertainment for a new generation.
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