It takes a little more than a glass slipper and some friendly mice for Disney to be satisfied with its happily ever after.

“Embrace what makes you different” is just one of the life lessons that Walt Disney’s 1941 animated classic Dumbo shares. But now, with a stream of remakes produced and slated for release in recent and coming years, including a 2019 rehash of Dumbo, Disney might be holding on a little too tight.

According to Time magazine, Disney has at least 10 live-action remakes and spinoffs planned between now and 2020. This is on top of the eight remakes that have already been released since 2010. For those of us who grew up during the company’s 1990s animated renaissance—identifiable by the hand-drawn quality and innocence of its characters and songs—the return of these classics in live-action form is a walk down memory lane for many.

For some fans and film critics, however, the clear lack of originality behind these productions combined with the jarring difference in tone compared to the animated originals is irksome at best. Would a live-action Mulan really be the same without Li Shang? Is Dumbo really Dumbo if there aren’t any tears shed?

Regardless of these criticisms and concerns, a number of outlets have correctly pointed out that audiences of all ages are suckers for the familiar and the nostalgic—and it shows in the numbers. From 2010 to 2015, Disney saw its stocks grow by 200%. While Frozen certainly contributed to this soaring growth, the magnetic draw of Disney’s original classics is unquestionable—and the timing of these remakes is impeccable.

Thirty years since the beginning of the renaissance, the original viewers of iconic films from Beauty and the Beast to The Lion King are all grown up, some now with children of their own. As adults watch for the brief return to carefree innocence and children continue to experience the magic of Disney, the films are a failsafe reminder to a broader-than-usual audience of the timelessness of Disney’s classics that keeps the company at the core of childhood memories.

But recast with the bells and whistles of modern technology, these newer productions are photorealistic and constrained in ways that the hand-drawn cartoons were not. For one, as Dani Di Placido wrote in Forbes, the precision that illustrating afforded the animators over facial expressions, visual cues, and body language—especially where talking animals are involved—allowed them to “tell a beautiful, stylized story” that “was about replicating humanity.”

The important distinction here is that Walt Disney never intended for his films to be conflated with realism and replicability. Rather, their animated quality called for a suspension of disbelief and an immersion in the imaginary that would inspire adults and children alike to reach for their dreams, because “if you can dream it, you can do it.” As such, the staying power of these live action films will likely be quite low, but for the company, they do the job of re-centering Disney in the Hollywood scene and entertainment world very well.

What, then, is the real motivation behind Disney’s slew of star-powered, visually enhanced, and entirely unoriginal productions? In an industry as uncertain as film, the answer is unfortunately money. Falling back on the tried and true, pre-existing successful content and established audiences return much higher profit margins than new ventures that may take off only moderately or momentarily.

Take, for example, Tim Burton’s live-action Alice in Wonderland and the animated original Tangled, both films that came out in 2010. Producing Disney’s first live-action remake since the 1990s, Burton brought in over $1 billion USD at the box office alone. That’s more than five times the film’s budget—despite being panned across the board by film critics. By comparison, Tangled garnered itself an Oscar nomination, but it only amounted to $591.8 million USD at the box office. Despite having one of the biggest Hollywood budgets of all time (priced at $260 million USD) Tangled cleared the 100% return on investment only by a small margin.

Behind the faith, trust, and pixie dust is a clearly defined and well-executed strategy that relies on the enduring attraction of the classics, the novelty of CGI and photorealistic effects, and star power. While this formula diverges from Disney’s usual modus operandi, the company has long since accounted for its animated classics, with long-term frameworks keeping them alive and at the forefront of the public sphere.

Collecting all of its films and home-video releases in the ‘Disney Vault,’ the studio has adhered to a two-prong moratorium policy since the 1940s that allows it to control demand and access in roughly seven-year periods. Whether by re-releasing features like Bambi to usher in new generations or reissuing enhanced editions of ‘retired’ favourites for older audiences to relive the magic, the company’s cyclical strategy has kept fans coming back for more. Although the vault program is set to end with the official launch of Disney’s streaming platform, Disney+, the subscription-based service holds only new potential as a revenue source.

But nostalgia wouldn’t be enough to convince executives that investing millions to repurpose old content is worth it. What really clinches the monetary success of this strategy is that it also helps Disney continue holding onto the intellectual property rights to most of its content. The studio has, in fact, been in the copyright field for the long game.

Debuting in the 1928 short “Steamboat Willie,” Mickey Mouse had been set to enter the public domain in 2004, 75 years after his creation. In 1998, Disney executives and hired lobbyists thus took to Washington to appeal for changes to copyright laws. Citing legislation in Europe that protected their intellectual property rights for longer, Disney eventually got its way and the Copyright Term Extension Act made its way through the senate. Otherwise known as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, the revision allowed creators to retain legal rights over their works for a further 20 years.

Short of returning to Washington, Disney’s repackaging of content from the vault as independent releases then works around these copyright expirations. By incorporating individual audiovisual and thematic features in new films, Disney renews its ownership over intellectual property rights by virtue of the automatic copyright protections that take effect with each film or artwork produced. Where this artificial extension has huge implications for public access to and permissions for characters, songs, and motifs, even if the company cannot retain rights over the original films themselves, critics have also picked up on another underlying issue.

As argued by The Mary Sue, the vast majority of Disney’s characters and storylines can be traced back to other works that are available in the public domain. From Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which fell into the public domain in the early 1900s, to Mulan, whose source ballad was written at some point during the fifth or sixth century, Disney has profited tremendously from the free use and manipulation of other people’s work. But as these stories become conflated with the Disney studio, the original public works are increasingly pushed to the wayside and run the risk of being forgotten or misattributed entirely.

The same cannot be said for its own productions, however, and as Disney acquires more and more rights to franchise works under Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilms and more, the future of creative license and pop culture in the public domain is unclear.