It’s become a sad tradition of sorts. After every Transformers movie, Michael Bay insists that he’s not interested in returning to direct a sequel, and then a few months later he shocks everyone by taking the money and making the same movie all over again. Now that he has completed a trilogy, a lot of people have been assuming (and hoping) that he might finally step away from the series. But would Paramount actually entrust the giant robots to anyone else? With Transformers: Dark of the Moon earning over $1 billion worldwide last year, there’s no way that Paramount would simply let the franchise die, but at the very least it might be a good chance to start over again with a fresh new approach. Well, as it turns out, the fourth Transformers movie is indeed being called a reboot, but unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like there will be anything fresh about it. According to producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Michael Bay will be the one doing the rebooting.

In a recent interview with MTV, di Bonaventura confirmed that Michael Bay would return to direct Transformers 4 and that they are aiming for a release date sometime in summer 2014. Here’s what he had to say about it:

“Yeah Michael’s gonna direct and it’ll be releasing in the summer of 2014. We’re excited and I think the challenge there is we really are gonna do a reboot, and what that’s gonna be we don’t even know yet… It’s not the way—I’m not involved with Spider-Man but what I perceive Spider-Man to be is a redoing of the whole thing, [Transformers 4] is not. It’s an evolution. There’s still continuity that’s going on, and yet there’ll be a lot of new cast. Whether there’s anybody from the [original] cast, we don’t even know yet. But the truth is, it’s gonna be a whole new story. The characters that would certainly come along would be Optimus and Bumblebee I’m sure.”

He also went on to deny the rumours of Jason Statham’s involvement. Either way, it’s clearly not a true reboot as it seems like the human cast would be the only real difference here. Shia LaBeouf has said that he will not return for a fourth Transformers movie and I seriously doubt that any of the other human characters would be deemed important enough to bring back. Anyone who was hoping that we might get to see another director’s vision of the series, or that they might even just redesign the Transformers themselves a little bit… well, better luck next time. Would you have preferred to see a new director take on Transformers 4, or are you excited to have Michael Bay simply give us more of the same?

Around the Web: