He was one of the better things about X-Men Origins: Wolverine and next year you’ll see him as the lead in John Carter of Mars. Now he’s been cast in Battleship and Taylor Kitsch seems well on his way to being the next Sam Worthington.

THR says director Peter Berg has cast Kitsch to play a naval commander named Alex Hopper. The character is described as “wildly spirited” and “a great seaman but a lousy politician.” Hopefully he’s also good at killing aliens because even though the movie’s based on the decidedly not sci-fi board game of the same name, this Battleship is a sci-fi movie with an alien invasion plot.