The silliest part is, they could absolutely keep milking nonsense forever. All they’d lose is exclusivity. Star Wars would be a genre, the way zombies are, thanks to George Romero’s incompetent producers. And every new detail would still be in that vice-grip for another thirty years! Winnie The Pooh is public-domain and Disney’s still gonna slit throats if anyone depicts him wearing red.
Burn the phoenix again.