Joanne Joo for Insider
In 2010, the Walt Disney Company remade "Alice in Wonderland," kicking off a run of 14 live-action remakes of their animated classics that would gross the company $3.2 billion at the domestic box office over the following decade. That same year, eyeing the coming conclusion of their "Harry Potter" film franchise, Warner Bros. struck a deal to have an entire section of Universal's Orlando resort built out into The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, beginning a brisk, decade-long trade of selling millennials plastic wands and color-coded apparel and homewares. One year later, Sony would reboot the "Spider-Man" franchise, Fox would reboot the "X-Men" franchise, and two years after that DC would reboot the "Superman" franchise.
This wave of reboots and revivals was not a coincidence.