Here’s another example: during the Victorian era, Alfred, Lord Tennyson revived interest in The Matter of Britain (King Arthur, Lancelot, etc.) by publishing, over several decades, what would become The Idylls of the King.

Thence T. H. White, thence Mary Stewart, thence Marion Bradley (an otherwise wretched person), thence that terrible Sam Neill vehicle, thence. . .

All of this to say there’s a flaw in your logic: financial incentives are not the only reason people create new things. Financial incentives in fact destroy other artistic incentives, and so we already lack the works that would have been created in their absence. The proof of this is the graveyard of Netflix series canceled in the second season.

(P.S.: Ah, here, in the acknowledgements to _The Mists of Avalon_: "Finally, I must express loving gratitude to my husband, Walter Breen, who said, at a crucial moment in my career, that it was time to stop playing it safe by writing potboilers, and provided financial support so that I could do so. . ." A potboiler is a book written to cater to the popular taste, so that the writer might earn a living.)