... it all boils down to milking the cash cow.

I got your point of view, but I wouldn't say it's always like that. Of course, when money talks, many of them squeeze the opportunity for all it's worth. On the other hand, I still think some of them genuinely had good intentions (at least at the start of their respective projects).

Big productions try to stretch them out to keep the audience engaged, so they delay the ending again and again, and in the process, they make bad decisions that ruin the story.

Yeah. That's what I call a "suicidal strategy" by the way.

The entire scenario (or most of it) has to change, not least because the audience will no longer be the same.