So first off:
There's a difference between remaking a best Oscar picture with ambitious changes and rebooting Jumanji, Spiderman or X-Men for the umpteenth time or giving way too many sequels to Toy Story or Men in Black. Another great remake? The Oscar-nominated Nightmare Alley that's a remake of a 1947 film. Classics like Maltese Falcon, Ben-Hur, and the 2005 King Kong are all remakes as well.
In any case, the fact that the film didn't make money because film goers are driven more by superhero films, films with explosions, and cartoons.
As for your WSS criticism, did you actually watch West Side Story?
The people who called it racist were misguided virtue signalers who never were prepared to recognize the right of any white film maker to tell a latino narrative and were unable to appreciate the context of the original. They don't speak for the vast majority of people who saw the film. Most of those people appreciated it plenty as evidenced by the positive reception of the film by so many critics (traditionally very difficult to please).
It's a complex piece of work that various people have opinions about and if no one was offended at all, it wouldn't have been much of a thought-provoking film.
I think it would have been really interesting to see a Latino director's take on it, but it actually was written by four marginalized gay men and back then, being Jewish (which was the case for 3 of them) made you more marginalized than today. The Jewish slums in 1950s New York were right next to the slums for Puerto Ricans and blacks. In fact, the Jets were originally written to be Jewish. The Jets were designed to be Jewish and Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim spent a lot of time in Puerto Rico and Cuba researching so I give them credit of doing them of doing their homework. Similarly, Spielberg held a number of town halls in Puerto Rico and I felt like Spielberg and the writer Tony Kushner upgraded it more by acknowledging the transgender character and explaining the fact that that the Sharks weren't just villains they had economic survival at stake just as the Jets came from deadbeat dads and had little guidance. This is also the version that gives Maria the most agency.
