By Ben Travis, Chris Hewitt | Posted 16 Apr 2019

The X-Men franchise has been a comic book movie stalwart for nearly 20 years at this point – and despite its big screen heritage, there are still a few iconic elements from the page that have never made it to the big screen. This summer’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix will not only offer a fresh take on the definitive Jean Grey story, originally brought to the screen in 2006’s maligned The Last Stand, but will also introduce a new location that will be familiar to long-time X-fans: Genosha. Take an exclusive look at its movie debut here, as seen in the new issue of Empire.

In Dark Phoenix, the island is Magneto’s mutant paradise – a lush, green haven that he’s built upon using metal junk he’s summoned from the sea. In Jean Grey's hour of need, this is where she finds Erik Lehnsherr looking for some much-needed advice.

Speaking to Empire in the upcoming June issue, on sale April 18, director Simon Kinberg revealed that he’s long wanted to introduce Genosha to the X-Men movies. “Genosha is something that I’ve always been fascinated by,” he said. “It’s sort of Oz for mutants. As a Jew, its parallels to Israel and the notion of the promised land intrigued me even as a kid. I was looking in previous X-Men movies for a way to incorporate it. It was something I thought about for Apocalypse, but then went in a very different direction.”

Read plenty more about Genosha and X-Men: Dark Phoenix in the new issue of Empire, on newsstands now and available to order online here. X-Men: Dark Phoenix comes to UK cinemas on 5 June 2019.

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