Julia Roberts to Make Fresh Flowers the New Blood Diamonds?

Roberts to Play Enviro-Martyr: Julia Roberts will star as wildlife conservationist Joan Root, who struggled against flower-farm industry in Kenya and was murdered in her home earlier this year. Pic, to be written by David Magee (Finding Neverland), is based on Vanity Fair article and will shoot for Working Title early in 2008. Murderous flower-industry thugs to send Roberts bouquet of dead daffodils as shot across the bow. [Variety]

Hawn to Direct: In feature directing debut, Goldie Hawn will direct husband Kurt Russell and herself in Ashes to Ashes, comedy-drama about a widow traveling to Kathmandu to scatter her husband’s ashes, only to lose them along the way. Russell will play the ashes. [Variety]

Winterbottom Starts Five-Year Project: Risk-taking director Michael Winterbottom (The Road to Guantánamo, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story) begins shooting Seven Days, inaccurately named film that will cover five years of life in prison for a convicted drug smuggler. Film, starring John Simm and Shirley Henderson, will be shot (and written) sporadically over the course of five years. This item is too awesome to make fun of. [Variety]

Clipse Dropped by Jive: Or Jive dropped by Clipse. Either way, hip-hop duo Clipse, whose acclaimed album Hell Hath No Fury endured legendary label trouble on its several-year journey to completion, are no longer part of that label, Jive. Hell hath no fury like a label dissed, we guess. [Pitchfork]

Random to Pay Frey Readers $2.35 Million: Settlement approved by federal judge in class-action suit will force Random House to pay $2.35 million to readers upset by James Frey’s falsehoods in A Million Little Pieces. Rebate applicants must tear out page 163 in their copy of the book and send it in; we’ll be at the Strand, tearing page 163 out of every used copy we can find. [PW]

Utopia, Spring Win Drama Desk: Continuing their inexorable roll toward Tonys, The Coast of Utopia and Spring Awakening win Best Play and Best Musical at the Drama Desk Awards. [NYT]

Coram Boy to Close: British Broadway transfer Coram Boy, which reportedly cost $6 million to mount and was overlooked for Best Play Tony, to close May 27 “unless receipts go up,� which they won’t. [Variety]