EXCLUSIVE, UPDATED with additional castings: Outlander’s Sam Heughan is set to join Vin Diesel in Bloodshot for Sony Pictures. The pic, which marks Diesel’s first starring superhero film, starts production in July with Dave Wilson directing and Neal H. Moritz producing. The film is casting up quickly, with Eiza Gonzalez and Michael Sheen also coming aboard.

Bloodshot is a central character in the Valiant Expanded Universe – a comic book universe composed of a diverse array of thousands of characters embodying a wide variety of genres, tones and demographic groups and over 81 million comics sold. Valiant’s superheroes are ordinary people in extraordinary situations rather than gods and demi-gods; they are complex characters that reflect contemporary society, politics, and diversity of the modern world.

Wilson is a director at Blur Studios, the VFX factory owned by Tim Miller, who directed the first Deadpool and is reviving the Terminator franchise. Pic re-teams Fast and the Furious‘ Moritz and Diesel. Sony is hoping to launch a franchise here through the Bloodshot comic universe.

The film fits nicely into Heughan’s hiatus before he returns for Outlander, which recently got a two-season pickup from Starz. Heughan next stars with Kate McKinnon and Mila Kunis in The Spy Who Dumped Me, which Lionsgate releases August 3.

He’s represented by UTA and United Agents in the UK.

Variety broke the news of Gonzalez and Sheen boarding the pic.