When it comes to a franchise as expansive as Transformers, there's a lot more that factors into its success than just box office numbers. There's also this little thing you might have heard of called "merchandising". Corporate tie-ins, Slurpee cups, automobile ads, and since we're dealing with a Hasbro toy, how many action figures get sold to the kiddies. In the case of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the film made over $1.1B, but it didn't sell quite as many toys as the other movies did. And that's why you're going to see a totally new cast for Transformers 4. Simple as that.
TFW2005 caught this quote from Hasbro President Brian Goldner while speaking at the UBS Conference...
Goldner: This is why Transformers 4 will have a new cast of [robot] characters and it will be a story revolving around these new characters.
Goldner stated that having the same characters for three movies put a damper on sales, which I guess makes some sense. A new cast isn't that much of a surprise since back in June Michael Bay confirmed a new cast and a storyline that would take place mostly on Cybertron. Goldner also revealed a rather pointless temporary logo, which pales to the awesome "fake" poster we got a few months ago.
Ehren Kruger is currently drafting the script for release some time in 2014.
