I have a melancholy suspicion that malls are going to do better over the coming years because they're one of the easiest places to find free climate control. Movie theaters were created as a way to get people to pay for air conditioning. As more people share kitchens and bathrooms and fewer people have yards and viable common areas I suspect that malls are going to revamp as places you can hang out all day and be tempted by small things as opposed to places you go to buy big things and end up buying small things. Malls now have Dollar Trees as tenants. This was unheard of even ten years ago.
Even as the late as the late 90s, I saw dollar stores in mall. They wouldn't be in rich malls such as the Short Hills Malls but they weren't entirely uncommon in New Jersey malls.