They don't care, for a large assortment of reasons, but in essence they dump almost all of their efforts on marketing now. They don't care about making a product that the audience will like because they think they can simply convince the audience to like it.

Throw cash at reviewers and influencers who all proclaim it's the "best and latest thing ever". Hold huge public spectacles with hundreds or thousands of people, just to make some "exciting" announcements. Merchandising, amusement park rides, royalty fees, make their investors buy into the lies, do whatever they can to make it seem like the consensus is that their shitty products are somehow "good" while they take in bits of cash from every avenue possible.

Oh, and the franchise itself is a huge part of that marketing mindset too, if it wasn't already obvious. They also probably assume old fans aren't as profitable either, which could "possibly" be true, but at the same time I wonder why they don't just try to be faithful to the original material while appealing to both new and old fans alike.

Then of course there's the DEI money as another variable too.

Why not just make new stuff?

Didn't Tolkien say something to the effect of Evil can't create anything so it corrupts stuff instead? It's that principle playing out. These people are morally depraved hobgoblins who can only destroy things that others have made. Frankly in centuries past they'd have been ostracized or hunted as the heretics they are.

Do they not understand that they'll lose the old audience?

No, they don't understand that. They believe they'll gain more than they'll lose and they take the old audience for granted. Because let's be real, it's pretty rare that an IP loses a significant majority of its audience all at once to make a problem. It usually takes years of it.

Take Doctor Who for example. We can see the woke elements all the way back in Matt Smith, but it wasn't until Capaldi and Clara that people really started to complain, and it wasn't until Whitaker that people actually started leaving en masse. It took years.

The idea is that they can gain more than they'll lose. They're hoping it will be like a transaction. They're hoping they'll loose something like 10,000 followers in the hopes of enticing in a new 50,000, but it's just not going to happen. And that doesn't even look at the types of fans they're losing vs gaining. The 10,000 they lost? Probably more likely to engage in extra purchases and merchandise. The 50,000? Probably casual. But they don't care, because it's about making a cultural impact. And those 10,000 are the unwashed masses, not the refined culture. Ignore of course the fact that mass media is and always has been largely shallow.