Former Doctor Who star Matt Smith’s Hollywood career is continuing to take off, with his casting as the lead in the new SF thriller Patient Zero, according to a report at Deadline.

Smith will appear opposite Game of Thrones star Natalie Dormer in the movie about an unprecedented global pandemic of a super strain of rabies which has resulted in the evolution of a new species driven by violence. An inexplicably immune human survivor (Smith) with the ability to communicate with this new species must spearhead a hunt for Patient Zero in order to find a cure to save his infected wife and humanity.

Unlike some of his predecessors in the role, Smith isn’t shying away from genre roles – since stepping down as the Doctor, he has filmed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as well as the new Terminator: Genesys.