With every new sequel comes new characters, and when you have a multi-billion dollar franchise like Transformers, you will add as many characters as you can to boost toy sales. So it’s not surprising at all to hear that we will be seeing new characters introduced in the untitled Transformers 4 movie.

It’s been known that the core cast of the Transformers films won’t return to reprise their characters. As to whether or not the voice cast will return to voice their respective Autobot personas is unknown. But according to HASBRO CEO Brian Goldner, we will be seeing more Autobots recruited to fight the war against the Decepticons in the next film.

Bleeding Cool came across the news, which was featured on the Transformers fan site TFW2005. At the UBS Best of America’s Conference, Goldner spoke about the future of his company, saying that in an effort to boost toy sales, the next Transformers film will feature a new set of robots.

This does not confirm that Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Ratchet, or any of the remaining Autobots will be killed off or replaced in the next film. But if they are replaced, killing them off would be the best way to introduce new characters as well as piss off more fans. Something that director Michael Bay is very familiar with.

But part of the reason why there may be a push to have new characters is because of the low toy sales when the third movie, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, was out. Hardly any new characters were introduced during that time and most weren’t remodeled, so it defeated the purpose of buying the actual toy. Bumblebee, Starscream, and Optmius Prime didn’t go through any changes, and few new characters were brought in.

We’ll see how this all plays out as we get closer to production, but for now let’s take the word of a CEO of a toy company with a grain of salt. After all he doesn’t have the final say, Bay and Paramount does.

[Source: TWF2005 via Bleeding Cool]