Just in case pending economic disaster, ongoing war in the Middle East and the inability of the Democratic party to settle on a candidate isn’t causing enough stress, A&E has retooled “The Andromeda Strain,” a 1971 movie about a lethal virus that arrives on Earth and begins taking out almost every living thing it touches.

But Andromeda is not your garden variety lethal virus. It sometimes makes its victims grotesquely kill themselves. One man chops his own head off – with an chainsaw. One woman douses herself with gasoline and lights a match.

“The story has applications to now but we didn’t set out to do a message piece at all,” says Tom Thayer, one of the film’s executive producers. “The original movie was dated and confined to one location. There were a lot of opportunities to retell this story.”

In the original – based on Michael Crichton’s 1969 best-seller – four specialists (Arthur Hill as Dr. Jeremy Stone, James Olson as Dr. Mark Hall, David Wayne as Dr. Charles Burton and Kate Reid as Dr. Ruth Leavitt) are locked in a top-secret underground government laboratory called Wildfire. They are charged with destroying Andromeda, a killer biological infestation that has crashed to Earth via satellite.

Most of the 1971 movie centers on the four scientists in the lab desperately trying to solve the puzzle of how to obliterate the strain. The original is suspenseful and sophisticated but too limited for today’s audience, says Thayer.

“I don’t think you have the luxury these days of being too claustrophobic for too long,” he says. “We wanted to have multiple storylines for pacing and dramatics. All of it serves the ultimate story but we needed the option of being able to get away from the lab and our core group.”

In this version – developed over the past decade by Ridley and Tony Scott’s Scott Free Productions and shot entirely in and around Vancouver, British Columbia – five scientists are locked into Wildfire after the virus hits.

Benjamin Bratt stars as epidemiologist and team leader Dr. Jeremy Stone. Stone is backed by Major Bill Keene, M.D. (Rick Schroeder), a virologist; Dr. Angela Noyce (Christa Miller, “Scrubs”), a surgeon and specialist in exotic diseases; Dr. Tsi Chou (Daniel Dae Kim, “Lost”), microbiologist and former biological weapons designer, and Dr. Charlene Barton (Viola Davis), a pathologist.

Meanwhile, an aggressive, addicted TV reporter named Jack Nash (Eric McCormack, “Will & Grace”) is above ground trying to figure out what’s really going on, while government operatives try to get rid of him. Andre Braugher plays General George Mancheck, a military leader no one quite trusts.

“It’s always good to play a character with duality and Mancheck has exactly that,” says Braugher. “There’s nothing pure about him, but he does have an essential integrity. For most of the movie he is trying to control the scientists and events, and they eventually outrun him. He finally realizes that double-dealing and skullduggery are not going to be effective.”

The mini-series’ first night deals with what the Andromeda strain is. Part two, airing on Tuesday, May 27 at 9 p.m. ET, explores where the strain originated, something on which neither the book nor the original movie really focused.

While the movie does include some emotional moments between characters, it’s mostly a fast-moving, large-scale narrative that relates a terrifying tale. People die quickly and horribly when they come in contact with Andromeda, and the entire world is soon threatened.

“Faced with an ultimate crisis, human beings don’t react well. We panic. We grab for our own. We rarely have a rational and a well thought-out response to anything,” says Braugher. “In this movie, we’re trying to put that genie back in the bottle. Trying to close Pandora’s Box is far more interesting than just leaving it be.”

THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN

Monday and Tuesday, 9 p.m., A&E