Right now Iron Man is set for a May 2nd release, and if you’re Iron Man obsessed like me you’ve already been wondering whether Paramount will be doing midnight screenings on May 1st. With all the hype built up over this thing, it seems midnight worthy, so will those midnights happen?

Well the answer is… sort of. SuperheroHype got the scoop directly from Tony Stark, who phoned them from somewhere over the mid-Atlantic to let them know that the movie will actually be showing for the first time at 8pm on May 1st, all around the country.

This is both good, and bad. On the one hand, being able to see Iron Man even a second earlier is a good thing. On the other hand, 8pm screenings simply aren’t the memorable events that those late-night first showings often are. Midnight screenings are fun, geeky gatherings in which fans willingly eschew sleep in order to stay up together and watch something they’ve really been looking forward to. 8pm screenings, whenever they’ve been done before, invariably turn into a good place for Mom and Dad to drop the kids off while they go home and have sex.

Last summer it was all about 8pm screenings, precisely so Hollywood could sucker in more teeny-bopper kids, and it pretty much ruined the entire early screening concept. I hope this isn’t the start of another summer full of erotic lovemaking sessions for worn out parents with kids they need Hollywood to babysit. Give me my midnight screenings back.