IMO, it's just like Broadway doing revivals of famous musicals.
THEY HAVE A PRE-SOLD NAME.
Then they take that pre-sold name, twist the original story into a pretzel, move songs all around and assign them to different characters, alter the story-line so much you're not even sure it's a REMAKE any more, [Both Broadway Revivals and Hollywood Movies both do this to make their product more "palatable" to today's audiences] and then sell it to the public based on that pre-sold NAME.
I'm thinking of the 1994 Revival of DAMN YANKEES--the second act was rewritten so heavily I thought I wandered into the wrong theater by mistake after intermission.
Whenever a film is remade (I remember this was the case with BEDAZZLED), the Blockbuster near me triples the price of the original version and gets away with it because the market is curious about the original source of the remake.
Why does Broadway and Hollywood do it? Because they can--and make money doing it.
"I say YOU'RE the CUTEST one. No, I say YOU'RE the CUTEST One. And we go on like that from dawn to three."