Popeye village
Popeye Village is a complex of 19 wooden houses on the shores of Anchor Bay, in the north of the island of Malta, 2.5 km from the town of Mellieha. It was built in the 1980s as a filming pavilion for the musical Popeye.
General information
Sailor Popeye is one of the most popular characters in American comic books and cartoons. Among his fans are not only children, but adults as well: some enjoy following his adventures, others put monuments to Popeye for popularizing spinach, and still others go to the island of Malta to visit Popeye Village, built for the filming of the musical.
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By the law of movie life, the sets that were used to make a movie are usually destroyed, dismantled, burned, or taken somewhere. But the cunning Maltese decided to keep this miracle on their island. They begged the filmmakers not to break anything and promised to keep an eye on everything and keep it in order. The Americans took pity and left them this village. Now Malta has something that perhaps there is nowhere else in the world. The real village of Papaya. By the way, this village is thirty years old. Here is a small hotel, the same small zoo, and anyone who comes to Malta will never pass by such a village, will not pass by, he will be told about it. Everyone here knows about it, both small and big.
Musical comedy “Popeye”, on the creation of which worked film companies Walt Disney and Paramount Pictures, received real recognition among Americans. The fictional village of Sweethaven was specially built for filming, and today it is a real open-air museum. The village of Popaya is located on the Mediterranean island of Malta near the village of Mellieha.
.Construction of the village of Popay began in June 1979 and lasted seven months. A team of 165 workers worked to fully recreate the village drawn by cartoonist Elsie Chrysler Segar, author of the Popeye comic strip. Nineteen authentic wooden buildings were constructed, including not only houses, but also a post office and fire station. The building materials were shipped from the Netherlands and Canada, and in addition to boards, the workers needed 8 tons of nails and 2,000 gallons of paint. A breakwater was even built on the side of Anchor Bay to protect the sets from the surf.
.Filming of the musical began in January 1980, with Robin Williams making his debut in the title role. Already in December, the movie was released in theaters and collected $ 49 million dollars. Despite the fact that this amount was three times the budget of the film, Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney called it a “failure”, because, of course, to a real blockbuster tape about the adventures of Sailor Popeye was far away.
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After the filming of the movie, the village of Popeye was not used for a long time, but years later it was reconstructed. Today it is a family entertainment complex. Visitors can learn about the history of filming the legendary comedy, go boating in the picturesque bay, have fun on water trampolines, play mini golf and visit a cozy restaurant. In the village there are animators who helped to organize the leisure time of children. Kids are sure to please the aviaries with domestic animals, as well as the mechanized installation “City of Gnomes”. Here you can see gnomes eating, sleeping, fitness, sewing soft toys, carpentry and sorting mail. In short, a real Disneyland on a Maltese scale.
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