EXCLUSIVE: The Walking Dead‘s Jeffrey Dean Morgan will put down the baseball bat for a while as he has signed on to join Dwayne Johnson in the New Line monster movie Rampage. The film is on track for an April 20, 2018, release and has an ensemble cast that includes Moonlight‘s Naomie Harris, Malin Akerman, Joe Manganiello, Jake Lacy, Marley Shelton, PJ Byrne, Jack Quaid, Matt Gerald and Breanne Hill.

Rampage‘s exact logline is under wraps, but like the 1980s Midway arcade game on which it is based, the central conflict comes down to this: There are three giant monsters wreaking havoc across North America – and Johnson is the only hope of stopping them. Morgan will play Agent Russell, who works for a covert government division called OGA and rolls with serious swagger and attitude. Morgan takes the supporting role after quickly establishing himself as one of the more memorable small-screen villains for his role as the barbed wire-encrusted-bat-swinging Negan on The Walking Dead.

Rampage reunites Johnson with New Line, producer Beau Flynn and director Brad Peyton; they previously teamed for the global hits San Andreas and Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. The producers are Flynn through FlynnPictureCo, John Rickard through Wrigley Pictures, 7 Bucks Entertainment’s Hiram Garcia and Peyton through ASAP Entertainment. FlynnPictureCo’s Wendy Jacobson is co-producer, while the exec producers are Marcus Viscidi, Dwayne Johnson, Dany Garcia and Jeff Fierson.

The Rampage script is by Ryan Engle, with revisions by Carlton Cuse & Ryan Condal and Adam Sztykiel supplying the latest revisions. Morgan is repped by UTA, manager Rob Gomez and Bloom Hergott.