I’m sure some of you have stated this before but I’ll go ahead and say it anyway

I highly doubt Cameron is the reason why the current BD editions exclude the mono track, from what it seems he really only cares about visuals and doesn’t care so much about audio, just to at least want his movies to sound good. He also seemingly allowed it to be included on the old DVD releases and never asked for a newer DVD master and not include it (the 2006 BD even uses the same master as the 2001 DVD and he didn’t seem to insist on leaving off the mono track)

I suspect it’s most likely MGM’s laziness is the reason why the mono track isn’t restored considering this isn’t the first time an earlier DVD release of theirs had a mono track and the subsequent blu-ray edition of the same title excluded it in favor of a 5.1 track (just look at Red Dawn and In the Heat of the Night (pre-Criterion) to name a couple of examples)

If Arrow is working on a 4K of this movie it would most likely include the mono track