Wigglehop: A Movie Planner App Remembered

Wigglehop was a movie-planning app made by a small studio called Plastic Trophy, whose archived tagline described its work as being “for the human race”. This page is an informational look back at the app as it was presented in 2011. It is not the studio’s own site, and the app is not offered here.

The problem it set out to solve

Most cinema apps of the time let you drill into a single film and see a list of showtimes, one movie at a time. The Wigglehop pitch was that choosing a film is usually a social decision. People compare their own wishes with those of friends, so a useful app should let them gather several theaters, films and times into one place instead of hopping between screens.

How the app worked

• One page for many choices. Users could collect any number of movies, showtimes and theaters together and view them side by side, with countdown timers, trailers and short plot blurbs.
• Planning with friends. A plan could be built, shared as an invitation and discussed. Everything stayed in the plan afterwards, so if a dinner ran long, the next film in the list was one scroll away.
• A quick solo route. For someone going alone, the app opened on a movies page based on saved favourite theaters and a preferred time window such as evening. Finding a showing took a scroll, a tap and a swipe.
• Realistic times only. It was designed to hide showtimes you could not realistically reach.

Small details the makers highlighted

The studio said it wrote each short synopsis with care, picked movie posters by hand and sorted the movies page by release date instead of alphabetically. Countdown timers on plans refreshed every minute. The app was also said to have been featured twice by Apple in its store, in collections about movie lovers and date night.

What is on this site

• Movie buzz, a list of films that were showing in late 2010 and 2011, with short summaries.
• Terms of use, summarised in plain language.
• Privacy policy, summarised in plain language.

Opinions, ratings and press quotes that appeared on the original site are not reproduced here, and nothing in this archive can be used to plan a trip to the cinema today.