THOSE rats that made “Fear Factor” a hit are coming back – in a movie about the rats under New York City.

Such is stardom.

Fox’s “The Rats” – a two-hour thriller starting Vincent Spano (“Alive”) and Mädchen Amick (“Twin Peaks”) – follows attempts by the city’s best exterminator and a department-store PR exec to stop a colony of diseased rats from overrunning the city.

So far, so good. But along the way they’re thwarted by red-tape as the city’s government tries to hide evidence of the impending invasion – fearing it will keep tourists away.

The movie used about 400 live, trained stunt-rats – many from the same people who supply the rats for NBC’s hit reality show, whose most famous stunt was making contestants lie in a coffin to be covered by some of the same rats used in the Fox movie.

Computer animation simulated the millions of rats that live underneath New York and threaten the public – in the movie anyway.

The movie is set to air Sept. 17.