Like it or not, there will be a fourth TRANSFORMERS movie from director Michael Bay. Recently whilst promoting TRANSFORMERS: THE RIDE, an 100 million dollar attraction at Universal Studios, further details concerning the next film managed to slip out amongst the hyperbole about the reportedly amazing ride.

As previously confirmed, TRANSFORMERS 4 will be the last film in the franchise to be directed by Bay. The fourth will also serve as a reboot and relaunch of a new trilogy with subsequent instalments to be helmed by someone else. There will be something of a re-design of the robots to create a new look and neither Shia LeBeouf or Josh Duhamel will return to star in the movies as there will be an all new cast.

The increasingly throw away use of the term ‘Reboot’ worries me. First it was SPIDER-MAN but now we are talking about a reboot of a franchise barely five years old. Are attention spans really that short? What they could be referring to here is focussing on a different part of the universe with a different collection of robots and not Optimus Prime and Bumblebee etc but existing within established continuity, at least that’s what I hope. I really don’t think that they need to go outside of the universe already established anyway and could just take existing robot characters into outer-space to fight Unicron or something, but hey I’m not in a position of power. I’m sure Bay knows what he is doing…

Filming and casting announcements will likely start after Bay has finished PAIN AND GAIN, a film I am actually really looking forward to.

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