Seems to me that one variable might be if the material could stand up to a more modernized version. I think someone a couple of years ago remade "12 Angry Men", a story about one juror who manages to convince his fellow jurors that the accused is innocent. When it was first made it had a great social message, but in the years that followed more "material" came to light to include in the remake. Don't know how the remake went, never saw it, but that's what I'm talking about.
However, to remake a classic just to rip off the title is just plain wrong. Example: the rip off of "Psycho" where every word, every camera angle, everything was just as Hitchcock had done it.
There have been several tellings of the wreck of the Titanic, but the last one was pretty good. Every once in a while a new look at an old story is not necessarily a bad idea, but anyone who undertakes the task had better understand what s/he is doing, lest the result appear to be more of a rip-off than a re-interpretation.