People read WAY too much into the motivations of media companies.

The reason there are more of these movies are because people were asking for them for DECADES, and once they started making them, those movies saw big profits. All of these movies being made now are being made to chase those profits.

If they can make a few extra bucks from their 'news' divisions, by sowing some discord about the 'reason' behind this flood of new and different protagonists, then they'll happily take that money too.

The motive behind corporate actions is always money.