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For the 13th consecutive day, The Dark Knight Rises was the number one movie in North America. That streak should probably continue for another eight days until The Bourne Legacy debuts. There is at least some intrigue with regards to Total Recall, which could feasibly surpass Batman 7 on Friday or Saturday. Given the $200 million production cost, it had better. Until then, The Dark Knight Rises remains the biggest fish in a small pond.

On Wednesday, the Christian Bale movie earned $7,333,325, a touch more than I had expected. A 16% decline from Tuesday to Wednesday is better than the movie managed last week. I had projected about $700,000 less so this is only the second time in two weeks that The Dark Knight Rises has modestly impressed me. Its running total of $311,379,297 is far short of its predecessor’s thirteen day total $342,684,300 as the gap continues to grow. At this point, the only reason why I keep bringing it up is so that you can understand how scalding the pace of The Dark Knight was. Sequels to wildly popular titles should earn their money faster. Of course, The Dark Knight did not have to overcome the negative perception of Aurora, Colorado, either.

There were five other movies that earned at least $1 million yesterday. Those titles were (in order) Ice Age: Continental Drift, The Watch, Step Up Revolution, Ted and The Amazing Spider-Man. After Step Up 4 barely surpassed The Watch on Tuesday, the situation was much different on Wednesday. The Watch earned over $100,000 more. So funny beats dance-y once again. And everything else crushes Spidey. The pride of Marvel has fallen and he cannot get up.

The rest of the top ten is comprised of Brave, Magic Mike, Savages and Moonrise Kingdom. Magic Mike will go over $110 million on Friday. I had described the stripper film as Sex and the City 3. To my surprise, it has handily surpassed Sex and the City 2; in hindsight, I was underselling it. I projected Moonrise Kingdom would fall short of The Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson’s most popular movie to date. This appears correct as Moonrise Kingdom sits at $39,314,287, $13 million short of the prior film’s $52,353,636. It will come closer than I had expected, though.

Combined box office revenue for the top ten yesterday was $16.2 million. This total is not only down 18% from Tuesday’s $19.7 million but also a modest drop from Monday’s $16.6 million. Tomorrow should be even worse (remember that last Thursday was a rare exception) before the two new releases hopefully provide a burst of excitement into the proceedings.