Numlock News: August 10, 2026 • Hot Topic, Spider-Man, Preakness Stakes

Aug 10, 2026

By Walt Hickey

Spider-Man

Spider-Man: Brand New Day earned the third-highest grossing second weekend on record with $145 million domestically. The movie has now made $655 million domestically and another $1.67 billion globally, and the momentum is so strong – and the August so sparse — that some analysts are wondering if this movie might be the first to hit $1 billion domestic or $3 billion globally, two heretofore unseen milestones at the box office. The Force Awakens topped out at $936.6 million domestically, while Avatar stands at $2.9 billion globally. And speaking of Avatar, this past weekend The Odyssey just beat its IMAX record, with $289 million in IMAX ticket sales, and it hasn’t even opened in China yet.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

Diamond

A group of publishers is settling with Diamond Comic Distributors over the fate of inventory held in Diamond’s warehouses when the company — which long served as the intermediary distributor connecting dozens of publishers big and small to hundreds if not thousands of independent retailers that sell comics — went bankrupt in 2025. Initially, Diamond attempted to sell off that inventory, but publishers sued, arguing that it was their property just stored in Diamond’s warehouses. Possession being nine-tenths of the law and whatnot, after more than a year of litigation, the publishers have agreed to forfeit $619,410 in fees to get their inventory back.

Christian Holub, Publishers Weekly

Voyager

In a maneuver described by the Voyager mission manager as the most important thing from the team managing the spacecraft Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, engineers have successfully pulled off a procedure termed “big bang” on Voyager 2. It could extend the spacecraft’s operation by another two years, and will soon attempt it on Voyager 1. Both missions were launched in the 1970s, did a flyby of several planets and are now hurtling away from our solar system in the vacuum of space. They have been able to survive long, long beyond their initial mission timeline thanks to clever engineering fixes and instrument retirements that keep the power on despite the onboard nuclear power source decaying and losing about four watts of power generation annually. The “big bang” procedure reduces power demand by 10 watts per year without any critical components becoming too cold.

Meghan Bartels, Scientific American

Preakness

The Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes are launching a six-race series next year and leaving the Preakness Stakes out of it, a move which may jeopardize the already troubled notion of the “triple crown” even further. The Preakness has previously occured two weeks after the Kentucky Derby and three weeks before the Belmont Stakes; that’s a tight turnaround that means many winners of the Derby essentially forfeit their chance at a Triple Crown and skip the Preakness in order to rest up ahead of the Belmont. Of 95 horses who ran at the Kentucky Derby in the past five years, only 13 horses started at the Preakness. The operators of the Preakness are trying to make their race more palatable by pushing the race back eight days.

Jim Chairusmi, The Wall Street Journal

Punk Inc.

In a move that has sent shockwaves through the goth, punk, alternative rock and emo scenes, Spencer Spirit Holdings has made a deal to acquire Hot Topic, which would consolidate the two iconic mall brands under a single corporate umbrella. One company would control the 650 Spencer’s locations, 615 Hot Topic locations and other properties such as Spirit Halloween (either 1,550 stores or zero stores, depending on the month?) and BoxLunch (280 locations). Researchers from the Umbrella Academy have long feared consolidation in the pop punk space; this simple plan will doubtless come under scrutiny at the starting line from regulators seeking to jump into the fray and avoid negative market fall out, boy, or even a panic! at the disco and maybe obtain a little new found glory in the process.

Milton Griepp, ICV2

Cylons? Jury’s Still Out

A new survey found the antiquated tech that Americans are nostalgic for and would like to use again, as well as the tech that is better left in the past. Vinyl record players are the standout here; 42 percent miss them and want to use them again, beating out the runners-up: digital camera (36 percent) and DVD player (29 percent). Dial-up internet service was the biggest “glad I no longer use,” with 81 percent assigning it there, followed by the floppy disk (68 percent), pager (68 percent), fax machine (61 percent) and rotary-dial telephone (57 percent).

Taylor Orth, YouGov

Contract Manufacturing

One reason that the Korean beauty industry is able to innovate so quickly and capitalize on new trends so fast is that many of the hot startup brands are hiring one of two massive, discreet cosmetics industrial powerhouses with large menus of pre-made and vetted product bases to start from. Kolmar (founded in 1990) and Cosmax (started in 1992) have become the two largest original design manufacture companies in the K-beauty space. The two giants have propelled Korea over the United States to become the second-largest exporter of cosmetics in the world after France, with $11.4 billion in exported cosmetics. How it works is that, for instance, Kolmar has a catalog of 150 semi-finished products, and fabless companies (essentially brands that lack manufacturing facilities themselves) hire them out. This is a huge base of clients; Korea was home to 28,412 fabless cosmetics businesses in 2025, quadruple the level of a decade ago, and many of them are just selling stuff actually made by one of two large players.

Nami Matsuura and Na Kiyoung, Nikkei Asia

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Numlock News is written each day by Walt Hickey. Email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Every post is entirely by a human; send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news. If you enjoy Numlock, tell a friend, word of mouth is the only way that independent publications like this one grow.

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