Empire Magazine reveals subscribers-only cover and news that The Dark Knight Rises takes place eight years after The Dark Knight.

Christopher Nolan on The Dark Knight Rises:

"Our story picks up EIGHT years after The Dark Knight".

In terms of finishing our story and increasing its scope, we were trying to craft an epic"
"It's really all about finishing Batman and Bruce Wayne's story. We left him in a very precarious place. Perhaps surprisingly for some people, our story picks up quite a bit later, eight years after The Dark Knight. So he's an older Bruce Wayne; he's not in a great state. With our choice of villain and with our choice of story we are testing Batman both physically as well as mentally. Also, in terms of finishing the our story and increasing its scope, we were trying to craft epic so the physicality of the film became very important."

Source: Josh Wilding found the Bane cover and TheSpaceGhost scanned and typed up the Empire article.