Movies! Mississippi Mall Cinema I & II

The Mississippi Mall Shopping Center had opened theatre-less in the Northwest portion of Picayune at the confluence of Highways 11 and 43 at South Haugh Street. At one point, it was anchored by a Grant City retail store and a Winn-Dixie Grocery Store. Grant’s closed when the chain went bankrupt and was replaced by a Murphy’s Mart. By 1978, it was home to the Mississippi Mall Cinema 1 & II.

On October 1, 1980, the operator became a franchisee to American Automated Theatres Inc. (AATI) now operating as The Movies! Mississippi Mall Cinema I & II. That operator would go on to form O'Neill Theatres of Slidell, Louisiana but The Movies! of Mississippi Mall would not officially be in that portfolio.

O'Neill decided to go all in on a four-plex, The Movies! River Ridge Cinema IV, which opened on August 10, 1984. But the Mississippi Mall’s halcyon days were coming to a close. Ames bought out Murphy’s chain of stores and word was spreading that the Mississippi Mall location would not survive the transition. The Movies! got out just before Murphy’s departure closing on July 18, 1985 with “Pale Rider” and “Rambo First Blood Part II”.

With Murphy’s exiting later that same year, the mall went into greyscale territory akin to a dead mall. In 1992, the Mall was considered closed and renamed as the Centraplex, a mixed use city-centric quasi civic center. It suffered a major fire in 2009. In 2012, the Centraplex was repaired and it is believed that the theatre may have been the venue used for live plays in 2012.

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