Ian Somerhalder couldn't stay away from the vampire trope for long! One year after the conclusion of The Vampire Diaries, the actor's next project has been announced, and it sounds like we're in for another bloody good time.

Somerhalder is set to star in Netflix's V-Wars about the first Vampire War, based on Jonathan Maberry's book franchise of the same name.

He'll play Dr. Luther Swann, a human who watches as his best friend, Michael Fayne, succumbs to a disease that turns him into a human-eating predator. As the disease spreads, Dr. Swann tries to figure out what is going on while Fayne becomes the leader of the newborn vampires. The role of Fayne has not yet been cast.

Although he's playing a mere mortal in V-Wars, Somerhalder will be tapping into his genre expertise to direct select episodes of the 10-episode first season. Of course, he honed his supernatural skills over eight seasons of The Vampire Diaries on The CW, where he played vampire Damon Salvatore, anti-hero and one point of the Damon-Elena-Stefan love triangle.