The party is over.

With movie theaters in major cities shut, Universal Pictures has taken a drastic measure. They are putting their current releases online for streaming right now.

They include “Emma,” “The Hunt,” “The Invisible Man,” and the upcoming “Trolls World Tour.”

Once this door is opened, it will never be closed. Theater owners must be apoplectic and I don’t blame them.

The studio says this isn’t for the rest of the year, just for the time being while people are quarantined and theaters are closed. But once the audience gets used to this, it will be hard to go back.

Disney should be next with a trio of films they postponed and don’t have much box office potential anyway. They are “Antlers,” “The New Mutants,” and “Mulan.”

Once that happens, really, we are in a new world.

Box office update:

With theaters closing, or limiting their seating for social distancing, there is massive trouble.

Not one of the three new films of the weekend cracked the $10 million mark. The leader of the pack was the Christian film, “I Still Believe,” at $9.5 million.

What people didn’t want to see was “The Hunt,” at $5.3 million a total disaster. Universal would have been better off putting it on VOD and just skipping theatrical.

“Bloodshot,” from Sony, starring Vin Diesel, managed only to find $9.3 million. Listen, Vin Diesel cannot open a movie. “Fast and Furious” is a hit because of The Rock, or Paul Walker. The new one, “F9,” postponed til next year, puts Diesel out front. Again, Universal would be wise to just put it on Netflix. Without The Rock. “F9” will really mean “delete.”

Pixar’s “Onward” dropped a whopping 73% from last week. Parents are not taking kids to the movies. “Onward” is at $60 million and about to drop significantly out of orbit. Disney should just put it on Disney Plus.

As for next week’s box office, there is pretty much nothing coming of interest. There are no big studio releases. With “A Quiet Place Part 2” off the list, we are headed into desolation row. Get on Amazon Prime and watch a good Robert Altman movie, like “Nashville,” or a Preston Sturges movie like “Sullivan’s Travels” or “Palm Beach Story.” See if you can find “Cherry 2000,” one of my cult favorites, if you really want to see what the post-apocalypse is like.