Hollywood is, self-evidently, in the middle of a nostalgia boom. A time traveler from the mid-1990s who suddenly lands in the mezzanine of any given AMC theater this year should be forgiven for thinking his experiment failed as he watches audiences pour into theaters for “The Addams Family,” “The Lion King,” and “Men in Black” — all 2019 rejiggerings of two-decade-old movies.

Why do the hard work of imagining new work, industry heads are asking themselves, when we can just update or serialize the old? Just last summer, a largely boring film with nothing going for it besides its title, “Jurassic World,” rode the coattails of its actually good 1993 ancestor to $1.3 billion worldwide . While remakes aren’t a new trend, the nostalgia-bait model has reached a new height, with an incessant slew of movies lined up to cash in on the yearning of aging millennials to relive fuzzier times.

Studios sitting on the rights to old intellectual property are busier than ever churning out new multiplex-ready versions of stories the public has even a vaguely fond memory of. In addition to sequels, Disney is rolling out live-action versions of its most memorable animated films. Many of them, such as “Toy Story 4,” are already out; a new “Lion King” (1994) comes out this month and the likes of “Mulan” (1998) all the way back to “Lady and the Tramp” (1955) are in the works.

Last year’s big anti-superhero film “Venom” was objectively bad, and described by some critics as a “calculated risk” by Sony. A controlled gamble meant to retain Sony’s shared rights to the Spider-Man universe’s characters, lest Marvel ’s parent company make a play to bring the character back to his original corporate home. And it worked. “Venom” got a 29 percent rating from Rotten Tomatoes, but grossed $855 million globally, more than enough to get a sequel quickly greenlit.