After starring as a tough Navy weapons officer in the summer action flick Battleship, Rihanna is trying something different. The pop superstar will lend her voice to the animated film Happy Smekday!

According to The Hollywood Reporter, RiRi will play one of the lead characters opposite “Big Bang Theory” star Jim Parsons in DreamWorks Animation’s adaptation of Adam Rex’s award-winning book The True Meaning of Smekday.

Tim Johnson (Antz and Over the Hedge) will direct the movie, which is being targeted for release in the fourth quarter of 2014.

In Happy Smekday!, friendly aliens invade Earth to escape their mortal enemy. When one of their own accidentally reveals their whereabouts, he has to flee with a teenage girl, taking a road trip across a postapocalyptic America. Along the way, he learns what it means to be human.