Well I don’t think we can say Zootopia or Monsters would be cheaper, as I’d assume it would be just as ambitious as Avatar, because cheapening out on either would be torn apart by everyone. But I would agree they might sell more merch, but I don’t think merch is the number one priority in this situation.
Also I’m not discounting social media, I’m just saying it’s not really representative of what you think it is. It has to be taken in context and not at face value, as social media can be easily manipulated. It’s why companies don’t look at individual or even groups of comments, they look at it in the aggregate like I mentioned.
Either way I don’t think we have to worry about them not building Avatar, as much as that is an interesting thought experiment, it’s gonna happen.