Disney has become The Studio That Ate Itself, a monster set on devouring its own back catalogue to satisfy its insatiable appetite for "new" product.

This week, it announced plans to make a live-action version of its 1998 animated feature Mulan, based on an ancient Chinese tale about a young woman who becomes a fierce warrior after secretly taking her father's place in the military.

That news comes just weeks after reports that Tim Burton would direct a live-action remake of the studio's 1941 animated film Dumbo, about a flying elephant.

In turn, that news came on the back of reports of a live-action Cruella, about the dog-fur-loving villain of Disney's Dalmatians films. And a live-action remake of its 1991 animated hit Beauty and the Beast. And a live-action remake of its 1967 animated Jungle Book, with Jon Iron Man Favreau directing.

Of course, Kenneth Branagh's live-action remake of the studio's 1960 animated Cinderella has just lobbed in cinemas, and it's not so long since we had Maleficent, a live-action update on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the 1937 movie that kicked off this whole animated-feature thing for Disney in the first place.

So it's pretty fair to say there's a pattern here. But what does it mean, and why has Disney become so enamoured of its own past?

It's all about the franchise

The first clue is with the studio itself.

Disney has in effect become a meta-studio, a franchiser of franchises. It has over the past decade acquired the creators of some of the biggest movie franchises in history – Pixar (Toy Story) in 2006, Marvel (Iron Man, The Avengers) in 2009, Lucasfilm (Star Wars) in 2012 – and turned the production dial on their efforts up to 11.

Think that's an exaggeration? In 2014, the studio outlined a daunting plan for its Marvel movies pipeline that extended to 2028. It has also announced plans not just for three new Star Wars movies but also a slew of spin-off properties too.

But one franchise has been missing from this ever-expanding universe: the very animations that gave birth to Disney, a studio that now has a market capitalisation of $US180 billion ($236 billion) – more than three times its value in October 2011.

That began to change in 2010 with the massive success of Tim Burton's live-action 3D take on Alice in Wonderland, a tale Disney had turned into an animated feature in 1951. Though not much liked by the critics, the film did staggering business, topping the $1 billion mark globally. A sequel, Alice in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass, is due out in 2017.

It's all about the kids

They may be venerable and in their day were revolutionary, but many of Disney's most valuable animated properties are now more than 50 years old. No matter how many times you remaster and re-release them, they look and sound hopelessly dated – especially to today's kids, who just aren't that interested in hand-drawn animation.

But that doesn't mean the stories can't be made to work for a young audience just like they did way back when – they just need to be repackaged in a format more appealing to today's teens, tweens and little kids. Enter CGI and CGI-enhanced live action.

It's all about the adults

Who takes those kids to see these movies? Their parents, or their grandparents, who often remember the original fondly. So while the ads and fast-food tie-ins and associated merchandising (pencil case, anyone? Pyjamas? Poseable action figures?) work their magic on impressionable young minds, nostalgia is doing its bit on older ones. That's the sort of stuff marketing teams dream of.

It's all about the technology

Many of these films are about fantasy of some sort: talking (or flying) animals, fairy godmothers, witchcraft, parallel universes. It used to be that hand-drawn animation was the only way to bring those fantasies to life, but that immediately made them seem, well, fantastical. Now CGI allows the world of fantasy to mesh with the world of (pretend) reality, seamlessly. That allows these stories to be told in a way that, to some minds at least, is vastly more engaging, and thus justifies revisiting them.

It's all about the money

Whatever the rationalisations for revisiting this back catalogue, there's one inescapable truth: if they make money they will be made, if not they won't.

One advantage for Disney is that it owns the intellectual property in much of its back catalogue and, where it doesn't, the stories are often in the public domain anyway.

But with budgets north of $100 million now typical, it needs big returns on these films – and that means big audiences.

Thankfully, many of these tales cross international boundaries: you don't need much knowledge of 17th-century Italy to understand why Cinderella (a version of which was recorded in written form by Giambattista Basile in 1634) appeals to anyone who has ever felt they deserved a better deal in life. Mulan is a different case, but with Disney pushing into China in a big way through a partnership with Shanghai Media Group, it would make sense even if it hadn't taken $US120 million in North America first time around.

It's about doing it first

With so many of these stories in the public domain, Disney risks being pipped to the post if it doesn't do something to breathe new life into them. Its original animated version of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book is a knockout, but there have been multiple other versions since, and Favreau's fresh take will face stiff competition with a competing version also coming from Andy Serkis, the actor behind Gollum and Planet of the Apes' Caesar, who is making his directing debut.

Likewise, the studio was pipped to Snow White by both Snow White and the Huntsman and Mirror Mirror (both 2012) before it got its own revisionist take on the story, Maleficent, into cinemas last year.

In the animated remake business, clearly it's a case of you snooze, you lose. Surely the news that Disney plans to reawaken Sleeping Beauty is only days away.

Then and now: Disney films getting the makeover treatment

Mulan (1998; TBA)
Dumbo (1941; TBA)
Beauty and the Beast (1992; 2017)
The Jungle Book (1967; 2016)
Alice in Wonderland (1951; 2010; 2016)
Cinderella (1950; 2015)
Maleficent 2014 (from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937)
Cruella (2017) from The One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)

On Twitter: @karlkwin