From Bay:
"The movie is going to continue 4 years on from the attack on Chicago which was in the last movie. So it’s going still to have the same lineage but going in a full, new, different direction and it actually feels really natural how it is going in that direction."
Like BC points out, a lot of folks were confused and/or less than pleased with the 8 year gap between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises but Nolan's film could be kicking off a new trend where instead of rebooting you simply have a time-skip to justify an all new cast.
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