Following the initial casting announcement last month, Columbia Pictures has added Ben Foster (Lone Survivor, 3:10 to Yuma) to the cast of the upcoming Inferno, the third film in the franchise that launched with The Da Vinci Code in 2006 and continued with Angels & Demons in 2009. Ron Howard returns as both director and producer with Tom Hanks set to reprise his role as Robert Langdon opposite Oscar nominee Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything) as Dr. Sienna Brooks, Irrfan Khan (Life of Pi) as Harry Sims (also known as The Provost), Omar Sy (The Intouchables) as Christoph Bruder and Sidse Babett Knudsen (“Borgen”) as Dr. Elizabeth Sinskey, the head of the World Health Organization. Foster’s specific role has not yet been revealed, but it said to be villainous in nature.

The Imagine Entertainment production, which has a screenplay by David Koepp based on the book by Dan Brown, is slated for release on October 14, 2016 and will begin principal photography at the end of April. The project’s executive producers include Dan Brown, Anna Culp, Bill Connor, and David Householter.

Inferno continues the Harvard symbologist’s adventures on screen: when Robert Langdon wakes up in an Italian hospital with amnesia, he teams up with Sienna Brooks, a doctor he hopes will help him recover his memories and prevent a madman from releasing a global plague connected to Dante’s immortal tome.

Coming up, Foster will be playing Lance Armstrong in Stephen Frear’s biopic Icon, starring opposite Chris Prine and Eric Bana in Craig Gillespie’s The Finest Hours and as part of the ensemble cast of Duncan Jones’ video game adaptation Warcraft.

Michael De Luca and Andrea Giannetti are overseeing Inferno for Columbia Pictures.

(Photo Credit: Ivan Nikolov / WENN.com)