@Malintex_Terek:
Hypothetical situation: Sunrise decides to remake Cowboy Bebop. How do people respond?
For those who think Bebop is a masterpiece, they'll be meh if it's good or bad. There's no way it'll surpass the original, which they'd show to their friends anyway. For new audiences, they might fail to see what's the big deal. The remake effectively has no audience among prior fans, both to share or to re-experience, so it's going to be catered to the current demographics, and that's where I see the recipe for failure.
You can make good remakes, even super long series - HxH 2011 shows that - as well as keep it CGI free. But Madhouse is kind of the exception to the rule, and they've only managed by farming out almost all the work to Korea. But the original HxH anime wasn't considered a masterpiece, so old fans were open to the remake. Look at what happened with FMA v. Brotherhood for the opposite scenario of a popular franchise having some sharply divided fans, with the manga ending not helping things. Or when GR - Giant Robo came out as a "re-imaging" of the original manga versus the people who came to know GR through Giant Robo the Animation.
All in all, I think a remake of the series - while good for the original author - is otherwise a conservative effort to milk a recognizable franchise, rather than a nod to fans or a series effort to cultivate new fans. And given the esteem and influence of the OVA there isn't a ton of room to improve.
You're absolutely correct when you say that it has a lot to live up to. Especially so when LotGH's fanbase is known for being somewhat elitist. Any and all deviations from the OVA's will be recieved poorly by these fans. Hell, the makers of this new LotGH are already trying to distance themselves from the old anime, explicitly stating that this is not a remake of that. I'm sure that even something as minor as soundtrack not being classical will be seen as sacrilage (and it will be, it ain't my Long German Names In Space without ships exploding to Dvorak, goddamnit) .
However, I'd still like to point out one counter-example where they genuinely did succeed in both pleasing the old fans and reeling in some new ones. Coincidentally, it is also a remake of an old space opera. However, I'm not going to equate Space Battleship Yamato 2119's percieved success to this case because there are noticable differences. For one thing, the properties don't have the same baggage attached and Yamato had been remade numerous times up to that point, for another thing, the makers of Yamato 2119 tried goddamn best to replicate the feel of the anime that people remembered, whereas, as I've already mentioned, LotGH 201? is already distancing itself from the OVA series.