Missouri Southern students won’t be selling out theaters anytime soon.

While a Southern ID may wield discount power at businesses such as Taco Bell and Tropical Tan, the movie theater is not one of them.

Unlike local universities who have discounts at their local movie theaters, Southern students face a different alternative.

Supersavers, a discounted movie coupon, are for sale for $5 at the ticket office in the Billingsly Student Center.

“The reason we do that is because our company sells our movie tickets directly to the University,” said Aaron Eidson, assistant manager of Hollywood Theaters in Joplin. “We don’t even have input in that; it’s just handed down to us.”

While they do offer students a discounted ticket price, Supersaver coupons are not accepted for certain movies during their first two weeks of release due to studio restrictions.

“Studio restrictions are in place so the first two weeks of the movie, [the studio] can make as much as they can to put toward their total box office earnings,” Eidson said. “Opening weekend Spider-man 2 made $80 million. That’s because they didn’t accept Supersavers or passes or anything else. The studio puts out a restriction for all companies.”

Eidson said checkers from different studios make regular stops at his theater to check sales figures. Any suspicious sales, including unauthorized use of Supersavers, could get the theater in trouble.

This semester, Southern’s ticket office has not had as large of a response to the Supersavers as it has had in the past.

“There seems to be a low interest this semester,” said May Doll, ticket office manager. “From what I’ve read, the movies aren’t real good this semester either.”

Students who do take advantage of the discounted tickets wish they could simply show their student ID for a comparable discount, avoiding the extra step.

“Ticket office isn’t always open,” said Tyler Dow, freshman marketing major. “They’re not open on Friday and Saturday nights.”

Movie tickets are not the only reason students and local residents are talking about the theater. Questions pertaining to the movies that don’t make their way to Joplin are also being asked.

“This area, our demographic, is the blockbuster movie,” Eidson said. “We have bookers. They look at numbers, see what movies do well here, they decide what we get and don’t get. We try to get every movie we can that people want, but sometimes things don’t work out.”

Eidson said special requests for movies can be made, but responses to those requests usually aren’t very large.

In the past, when a movie comes that has been requested, it usually doesn’t do much at the box office.

Hollywood Theaters is located at 201 Northpark Lane behind Northpark Mall. For movie information, call 625-1558. Supersavers passes are available at the ticket office at 625-9366.