While he's currently wreaking havoc in Guardians of the Galaxy, Lee Pace's next film sees the actor struggling to defend our planet from alien invaders.

Deadline reports the Ronan the Accuser actor will take the lead role in Prisoner of War, director Joe Miale's sci-fi thriller about an alien apocalypse. Pace stars as an American soldier who teams up with a French foreign aid worker (played by Skyfall veteran Bérénice Marlohe) in Africa to make one last stand in a destructive war between mankind and conquering aliens.

In joining Prisoner of War, Pace steps into a role recently vacated by Alex Russell, the Chronicle actor set to star in Galyntine, the dystopian TV pilot developing at AMC. Interestingly, Pace is an AMC regular himself, having just completed the first season of Halt and Catch Fire, about the rise of the personal computer in the 1980s.

Production on Prisoner of War begins in September.