LEGO “Jabba’s Palace Cinema” (Modification of LEGO Palace Cinema 10232)

The Palace Cinema (set #10232) is the latest entry in LEGO’s line of modular buildings. They’re designed to fit together to form a city block, and include things like a town hall, fire station, pet shop, and corner cafe. I really liked the idea of a LEGO movie theater, so I bought one even though I don’t collect the LEGO City line at all. I figured it would be a cool addition for a home theater.

But the name “Palace Theater” (and my tendency to try and shoehorn Jabba into just about everything) got me thinking about what it might be like if Jabba had a movie theater, so I decided to go ahead and make it “Jabba’s Palace Cinema.” One challenge was the big sign. Originally it read “PALACE” on both sides, but after considerable experimentation and a few extra bricks from my bits box, I managed to get it to say “JABBAS” on one side (the apostrophe, sadly, is beyond me).

I made the theater marquees on one of those sites that lets you type anything to generate a theater sign. They’re not permanently attached, so I can swap in some new movies later if I so desire.

The same goes for the posters. One thing that excited me about getting this set was that it would give me the opportunity to design LEGO-style movie posters for some of my favorite movies. (The included sticker sheet has posters for some cute LEGO-style movies, but they don’t quite do it for me.) I made these three posters from scratch in Photoshop. I based them on classic Star Wars posters and used photos of my own LEGO figures (with a few taken from Google for figures I didn’t have, etc.) You can see the originals below, but of course they were designed to be printed off at 1″ by 2″. [EDIT: Some people have asked for higher-res versions of the posters, so here they are: ANH, ESB, ROJ.)

The theater is comprised of three levels which lift off easily, allowing you to access the inside. On the first floor is the concession stand and the ticket windows.

Luke is obviously trying to use the force to get a discount…

On the second floor is the theater proper. I had to remove one row of theater seats to fit Jabba in there.

Jabba loves watching himself in Return of the Jedi. Just don’t tell him how his sequence ends!

And of course the rancor is on the roof. The poor keeper is stuck cleaning up after him and never gets to see the show.

I changed a few things about the building, like adding the torches and axes to the roof, but nothing too major. Still, I think it turned out pretty well.