Sarah Michelle Gellar

Sarah Michelle Gellar is returning to the world of sewer monsters, karate-fighting and powerful outsiders for next year’s “TMNT” - that’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” - movie.

Gellar is one of several actors confirmed for voice roles in the film. Also drinking water before speaking down a microphone are Patrick Stewart, Zhang Ziyi, Chris Evans and filmmaker Kevin Smith.

The former “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” star (who also provides a voice in the film “Happily N’Ever After”) will play the iconic role of April O’Neill, journalist and friend to the turtles. Paige Turco played the role in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III”, and before her, Judith Hoag in the original “Turtles” film in 1990.

According to USA Today, Evans is the hockey-stick-swinging Casey Jones, and Smith voices a cameo as a greasy-spoon chef.

The Turtles themselves will not have celebrity voices, however.

The back story, for those who don’t remember, is that a toxic waste spill mutates ordinary turtles into humanoid fighting machines, who are named after Renaissance painters and report to a martial-arts master who is a rat, named Splinter. The new threat: Max Winters (X-Men’s Patrick Stewart), a tech industrialist who is amassing an army of monsters in the city.