Rowling turned down Jacko on 'Potter' musical

JK Rowling, the best-selling author of the Harry Potter series, said she could imagine herself resurrecting her lucrative boy wizard, despite having officially penned his final adventures. "I could definitely write an eighth, ninth and tenth," Rowling told US chat show host Oprah Winfrey on ABC television. "I'm not going to say I won't. I don't think I will. I feel I am done, but you never know." Rowling laid down her pen – and Harry's magic wand – when she finished the seventh book in 2007, with a stunning record of 400 million copies of the series sold around the world. Rowling said she was grateful for the fans of Harry Potter -- the series has sold more than 400 million copies and the movies made from each book have together grossed $5.3 billion (Dh12.8bn) so far. But the outgrowth of Harry Potter merchandise and theme parks could be a lot worse, she said, noting she nixed pop star Michael Jackson's idea of making a Harry Potter musical. "Michael Jackson wanted to do a musical. I said no to a lot of things. For me, I love the films, I love the books, and there's elements that I love around it… like the theme park. But I only wanted to do it because I knew it would be incredible." She told Winfrey of her difficulties in coming to terms with the end of the story that made her name and fortune. "The end was huge. Like a bereavement. Although I knew it was coming -- we all know the people we love are mortal, we know it's going to end – you can't prepare yourself for it. I was in a slight state of shock," she said. But she will continue to write in some form, she said. "I literally can't stop. I have to do it." Rowling pronounced herself happy after bouts with clinical depression that deepened in her 20s, and then after contending with phobia that struck along with her new-found fame. "At the time, I had to deny how great the pressure was," she said. "It shouldn't have happened, this was a children's book." "There came a point where it was crazy," she said. She described the adulation during a second US book tour as "Beatles-esque," except that members of that 1960s band could "turn to each other -- I had no one to turn to." "I kept saying to people, 'Yeah, I'm coping' ... but the truth was there were times when I was barely hanging on by a thread." "I'm a writer. They're never going to want pictures of me on the beach in a bikini. I was never prepared for it," she added. In the UAE, Oprah airs at 3.30pm and at 8pm on MBC4.