Transformers 4: Leads rumored to be a high school girl and her “NASCAR” racing boyfriend.

Looks like fans of Optimus Prime are in for a treat. Director Michael Bay is planning a fourth film in the Transformers canon. “Transformers 4” is reportedly going to begin shooting in early 2013 and if the Internet rumor mill is correct, it will feature two new human leads.

The two new characters are purportedly a high school girl and her boyfriend, who is a Texas race car driver. “Texas race car driver” makes him sound rather too old to be dating a high school senior, but maybe they start racing earlier in Texas?

What is True?

The most reliable information on the upcoming film comes from a press release posted on both the Paramount website and the blog of Michael Bay detailing a two-picture agreement between Bay and the film studio. The release has this to say regarding a fourth Transformers film:

Bay will bring audiences a new take on the ‘Transformers’ franchise as he begins production on the fourth installment in the hit series of movies based on the best-selling Hasbro toyline. The third, and most recent installment of the franchise, ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon,’ is the fourth highest global grossing film of all time with 1.24 billion dollars of worldwide box office success. Directed by Bay, the movie will re-unite the filmmaking team from the hit franchise, including producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Don Murphy, Tom DeSanto and Ian Bryce; and executive producers Steven Spielberg, Bay, Brian Goldner and Mark Vahradian. Paramount Pictures will release the film on June 27, 2014.

So all we know for sure is there’s a “new take” — which could mean anything from new human characters to redesigns of the Autobots to using a new filming technique or visual approach. Movie maker Bay directing the film was practically a given since this franchise has been so successful because of him. The release date is really rather irrelevant to all of this, it might change, it might not, but it’s far enough away to give the team plenty of time to tune up the script, shoot, edit and add any special effects.

Transformers

Replacing the human protagonist altogether would be a big change for the the film franchise. “Transformers,” the first film in the series was about a high school kid (Shia Lebeouf as Sam Witwicky) who discovers the car he hopes will impress a pretty girl is actually a robot-ish alien (an Autobot) called Bumblebee. It turns out the Autobots have some mortal enemies in the Decepticons, a race of aliens with physicology very similar to the Autobots. Sam is the human protagonist for the first three films which created a great throughline for the story. If the character of Sam is missing altogether, the fourth film could be set at any time and featuring any of the bots. Stay tuned. Worst case, we should have a credible scoop by Spring 2013 when filming is slated to begin (allegedly).