Why do remakes need permission whereas spoofs/parodies don't?

Scary Movie consists of lot of spoofs of other movies, yet they didn't seem to have any permission for that from all those movies. But as you can see in this related example remakes need permissions to be made. So why not parodies?

Best Answer

This is a legal question.

At least in the US, parody and satire fall under the fair use umbrella of copyright law.

A remake requires permission if the material being remade is copyrighted. You can't remake Star Wars without permission as the story and characters are protected under copyright and trademark laws.

You could remake a Sherlock Holmes story provided you're remaking one of the original stories that is now out of copyright. You can't remake a newer Sherlock Holmes story as that would still be under copyright.