I have criticized Disney's animated movie a lot of times. There were many more faithful adaptations with more reasonable changes.
Because the target audience, changing it to a happy ending love story with some family drama could still attract new audience, especially among children.
But all the live action is about "lazy money from the old animated movie fans". So race swap will only drive old fans away and not getting enough new audience. Not just including the original tales' fans, but also the movies' fans, that's how business works.