Tinfoil hat theory: it's actually not an accident. Every kind of cultural thing appears twice, at a fixed offset of about 3 generations. First time around it's the original that captures the hearts of a given group and gets them to spend money. The second time around, it hits the purses of those same people, this time just banking on nostalgia.

I don't think it's any more complex or sinister than the fact that rehashing old content or look/vibe/sound is cheaper and easier than coming up with entirely new ideas.

Just look at movies and music over the last 5-10 years, it's mostly remakes, reboots, covers, and extensions of existing 'universes'.

Yes, I'm looking at the movies and shows over the last 5-10 years, and they aren't remaking and rebooting arbitrary older works - they're rebooting the specific stuff that the current most-spending generation grew up with.

I'm not saying it's sinister, but more that it's a plausible outcome of optimizing for profit.