$$$
Investors won’t fork over the big bucks unless creators can show them some sort of hook. Remakes, so the thinking goes, have a built-in audience that will boost numbers the opening weekend.
Of course, like anything else, sometimes it works and sometimes it flops.
Reboots also draw renewed interest in the original videos.
In music, cover versions of songs paid off for the producers who owned the publishing on the old material. All sorts of 1920s material hit the charts in the 1950s “rock and roll boom”.
Blueberry Hill
You Can Keep On Knockin’
Are You Lonesome Tonight
etc.
They should hire unknowns and try new things with smaller budgets then.