From Middle-Earth to Westeros, across the stars and through the mean underbelly of Gotham, media has inspired many a creative masterpiece over the years. And for lovers of these intellectual properties, what could be better than having a themed home theater that transports them, mentally and physically, to their favorite fictional worlds while they sit back and relax at the end of a long day.

A home theater is a place of escape, one meant to capture the awe and immersion of the big screen without having to risk interruptions that may come from the commercial experience. They can be as simple as a projector and a couple of comfy chairs in a dark room, or as complex as a wall spanning microLED screen in an acoustically treated antechamber.

As many integrators got their start—and still work to this day—creating bespoke home theaters for clients, the opportunity to go all in on the design with a creative theme and premise is one held with great excitement. At the end of the day, creating a home theater themed around a popular fantasy or sci-fi property boils down the core desire behind a media room: it’s all for the love of entertainment.

From a Tron-themed home cinema accessible by an arcade cabinet to a fantastic homage to 80s and comic book media, we’re digging through the CE Pro project archives to find the most creative home theaters that draw from various media properties as their design inspiration.

If you’re interested in looking at any more projects from the CE Pro Project Archives, be sure to out our other articles covering outdoor entertainment areas or challenging AV installations.

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Lord of the Rings Home Theater, Nashville, Tennessee, Visual Concepts

A joint effort between AcousticSmart and Visual Concepts, the client of this Middle-Earth-themed home theater is a repeat customer, having been so impressed by the firms’ work on a Game of Thrones theater that they wanted another one.

There’s a lot of little unique touches strewn throughout that really help tie the project together, such as the use of displays and Kaleidescape media server to create faux windows with active scenes, acoustical treatment that looks like stone and even a concession area featuring Lord of the Rings characters.

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‘Super’ Entertainment, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, Gravity Tech

For one superhero and Transformers fan, home entertainment is both having an infinite number of TV sources available at the touch of a button and being welcomed into your personal theater by an 8-foot-tall Optimus Prime.

Gravity Tech was tasked with making the former happen, creating an AV ecosystem comprised of a Kaleidescape premium movie system, Luxul AM24 switches for network management and Just Add Power’s HDMI over IP to greatly reduce the amount of cabling that ended up being needed.

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Stargate Cinema Project, Gramophone

Having won the BEST Project Award at CEDIA Expo 2019, this impressive home theater was themed around the Stargate franchise and features an incredible Egyptian motif. Gramophone and AcousticSmart came together for the design of this media center, which the client requested maintained the utmost realism in the design.

Everything implemented was custom made, from the lighting fixtures that were made to mimic the flames of wall sconces, to an impressive system of color-tunable lighting made possible through a Lutron HomeWorks system.

Read more on the Stargate Cinema Project

Joker Home Theater, San Francisco, California, Elite HTS

This Joker-themed home theater was completed just in time for the release of Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayal of the Batman villain in Joker by Elite Home Theater Seating (Elite HTS). However, this theater pays homage to nearly every iteration of the character, as well as many more characters from the DC Comics world.

“I’m a huge movie geek. With the bulk of my experience being in Visual FX, I leveraged those skills to design custom home theater seating and themed cinema rooms for our clients,” says Elite HTS CEO Bobby Bala. “Our Batman room was such a success, we wanted to push the boundaries even further for the Joker inspired room.”

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Coin-Op Secret Theater, Nashville, Tennessee, Bespoke Cinemas

There’s a scene from Tron: Legacy where the movie’s main character comes to Flynn’s arcade, unlocks the door, flips a switch, and wall-to-wall video games spring to life as Journey’s “Separate Ways” blasts through the venue.

It’s a memorable scene, and one that has been accurately recreated by the creative home systems integrators from Bespoke Cinemas, Nashville, Tenn., in the entryway to a newly constructed home theater. Relying on a CresTRON automation backbone, the team at Bespoke was able to recreate the same effects in the custom-crafted theater as the designers did on the movie set.

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Portal to Westeros, Nashville, Tennessee, Visual Concepts

The customer of this Game of Thrones-themed movie theater was just interested in a medieval fantasy-styled home theater, he was looking for the clearest most powerful sound system available for when he wanted to watch Game of Thrones.

The team at Visual Concept were certainly up to the challenge, working with Donny Hackett Design to design and retrofit the room. In the end, Visual Concepts specified a 7.2 Pro Audio Technology system because quite simply, no other audio manufacturer had product specifications that met the customer’s high expectations.

Read more on the Portal to Westeros

This article is part of the CE Pro Project Archives series, where we look back on projects submitted to the publication throughout the years to highlight the different components that feature in custom installation projects. To view past highlights, follow the link to view the full catalog.

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