Ryan Kiera Armstrong has landed the lead role in a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer series.

The 15-year-old actress is best known for playing Fern in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew and has now been hand-picked by Sarah Michelle Gellar to take the lead role in the new horror drama show.

Sharing the news via Instagram on Thursday, Gellar, who played Buffy in the original TV series and returns to reprise the role and serve as an executive producer on the new show, uploaded a video of the moment she told Armstrong she had won the part.

Footage showed the 48-year-old telling the teen, “I just wanted to ask you, and I wanted to make sure that you were okay with, how do you feel about helping me save the world?”

An emotional Armstrong could barely speak as she realised the magnitude of the video call, and Gellar continued, “We all love you, and from the second we all saw your tape, there was nobody else in our eyes that could do it, that we wanted to do it with. And I’m so excited to stand by your side and have you be my partner on this journey.”

Asked if she would accept the role, Armstrong enthusiastically said, “Yes” – prompting Gellar to declare, “Welcome to New Sunnydale.”

Buffy the Vampire Slayer originally existed as a comedy vampire film starring Kristy Swanson in 1992, which was a critical and commercial failure – but went on to gather a cult following.

A subsequent TV series starred Gellar as the titular vampire hunter and ran for seven seasons and 144 episodes from 1997 until 2003.