McDonald’s had high hopes for its signature plant-based burger when it rolled out in California and Texas two years ago, but it turns out customers just weren’t lovin’ it.

Joe Erlinger, the president of McDonald’s USA, said during this week’s Wall Street Journal Global Food Forum that the meatless burger had fizzled rather than sizzled. The McPlant, he put it bluntly, “was not successful” in the San Francisco Bay Area or Dallas.

Consumers in the United States aren’t “looking for McPlant or other plant-based proteins from McDonald’s now,” Erlinger said Wednesday. “It’s a trend that we’ll continue to monitor.”

At the heart of McPlant was a patty co-developed with Beyond Meat, which featured vegetarian ingredients like peas, rice and potatoes.

The plant patties cropped up in eight McDonald’s across the country in late 2021, including locations in El Segundo and Manhattan Beach. By January 2022, 600 restaurants across the Bay Area and Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area were slinging the meat-free sandwiches.

At the time, the fast-food giant tempted customers by suggesting they take a road trip to try the McPlant — available only “for a limited time, while supplies last,” the company wrote in a news release.

But an analysis done in March 2022 by the research firm BTIG indicated demand had withered, with consumers underwhelmed by the culinary creation.

Participating restaurants in the Bay Area and Dallas-Fort Worth were selling 20 McPlants per day, less than the 40 to 60 they had expected. Only three to five sandwiches per day were being sold in more rural East Texas, Marketwatch reported at the time.

That July, the company ended the meatless burger’s test run without disclosing plans for a nationwide rollout. The desire for meat alternatives climbed rapidly between 2019 and 2021 in the United States, but lessened in 2022 and declined in 2023, according to the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that promotes alternatives to animal proteins.

That’s not necessarily the case across the Atlantic, however, where McDonald’s plant-based offerings have apparently found greener pastures. In European markets, you can find the McPlant patty on a sesame bun with lettuce, tomato, ketchup, mustard, vegan sandwich sauce, vegan cheese, pickles and onions.

Erlinger said the company is focusing in the U.S. on chicken options, which are more popular with consumers.

Known for art house films, Oscar contenders and prestige horror flicks, indie studio A24 has landed a new round of funding led by venture capital firm Thrive Capital.

The studio declined to disclose the size of the funding round.

But the capital raise increased the company’s valuation to about $3.5 billion, up 40% from its most recent funding round, according to a person familiar with the matter who wasn’t authorized to comment.

That first fund raise was in 2022 and consisted of $225 million led by investment firm Stripes, which put the studio’s valuation at the time at $2.5 billion.

New York-based A24 said in a statement that it was “thrilled” to be working with Thrive Capital, “whose unique expertise will be invaluable in our growth.”

Thrive Capital, which is also based in New York, has typically invested in internet and software companies. The venture capital firm previously backed tech giants such as Instagram, Spotify and payment processing firm Stripe. Thrive Capital founder Josh Kushner will join A24’s board of directors.

“In A24, we see a company bringing extraordinary talent and creativity together with business model and technology innovation to reinvent entertainment for the modern age,” Thrive Capital said in a statement.

A24 is coming off a successful run for its political apocalyptic thriller “Civil War,” which came out in April and is its biggest-budget film to date, costing $50 million to produce. The film, starring Kirsten Dunst, grossed more than $120 million at the global box office.

The studio has developed a loyal following for its complex, critically acclaimed films, including “Uncut Gems,” “Hereditary” and “Lady Bird.” Its releases “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Moonlight” won Oscars for best picture.

A24’s efforts in TV have included the HBO hit “Euphoria” and the oddball Showtime satire “The Curse.”

Some people just have a knack, even a skill, for placing themselves at the center of obnoxious public business deals.

But few have proved as adroit at the practice as Martin Shkreli.

Remember him? Shkreli’s first foray into public notice came in 2015, when he jacked up the price of a 60-year-old drug to a point where it was virtually out of reach of patients for whom it was a lifesaving treatment.

At this moment, he is back in the spotlight for claiming that he launched a crypto token dubbed DJT on behalf of Donald Trump’s son Barron. More on that in a moment.

To begin at or near the beginning, in 2015, Shkreli’s company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, acquired the rights to a drug named Daraprim.

The drug was a crucial treatment for the parasite-borne disease toxoplasmosis, which in its worst manifestations can cause blindness, neurological problems or death. The disease remedy is a six-week, two-pill-a-day course of Daraprim; at the standard price of $13.50 per pill, that brought the cost of a full course of treatment to about $1,130.

Shkreli raised the price of Daraprim to $750 per pill, or $63,000. For those needing more protracted treatment such as HIV patients, the cost could exceed $630,000.

That made Shkreli the poster boy for the dysfunction in America’s pharmaceutical market, especially since Turing hadn’t developed Daraprim itself; the drug had been on the market since 1953. He seemed to bask in his renown, turning in a smirking performance before a congressional committee in 2016 that got him labeled the “pharma bro” in the popular press.

Shkreli kept making news. In 2015 he had been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors with fraud, based on allegations that he had cheated investors in two hedge funds he founded. A federal court jury convicted him on three felony counts in 2017. A federal judge sentenced him to seven years in prison; he was released in 2022.

Also in 2022, the Federal Trade Commission banned Shkreli for life from participating in the pharmaceutical industry, due to his actions involving Daraprim.

That brings us up to date, more or less. At this moment, Shkreli is embroiled in two controversies.

We’ll start with the Barron Trump affair. About a week ago, a crypto blogger stated on X (formerly Twitter) that Donald Trump “is launching an official token” dubbed DJT, Trump’s initials, on the Solana trading platform. “Barron spearheading,” he wrote.

Unlikely as that might sound, it fit into what appears to be a trend of third parties trying to associate Barron, 18, with Trumpian enterprises. In May, the Florida Republican Party selected him as a delegate to the Republican National Convention.

Barron’s mother, Melania, put the kibosh on that, stating that Barron couldn’t attend due to “prior commitments” — even though the selection had been endorsed by Donald Trump.

The tweet referring to DJT sent the new token soaring in the crypto market from a price of less than a penny to nearly three cents on June 17 and 18. On Tuesday it was trading between about 1.6 cents and 1.8 cents.

The initial tweet launched a frenzied effort among crypto followers to find out who really was behind DJT. On June 18 the crypto data firm Arkham Intelligence offered a $150,000 “bounty” to anyone who could identify the real creator of DJT. A day later it awarded the prize to ZachXBT, a self-identified “detective” on X, who established to Arkham’s satisfaction that it was Shkreli.

Since then, Shkreli has offered to produce evidence that he and Barron collaborated on the launch, including logs of Zoom meetings in which he and someone identified as “bt” participated.

Shkreli wouldn’t comment to me on the record. Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump presidential campaign replied to my queries about whether Barron worked with or even knew Shkreli or was involved with the coin.

During a lengthy webcast June 19 on the Spaces live-audio feature of X, however, Shkreli maintained that he had been brought together with Barron by one of Barron’s high school friends and that the coin was developed and launched at Barron’s initiative, and that Barron was determined to launch a Trump coin before Donald Trump Jr., whom he supposedly detests.

“I was approached, not the other way around,” Shkreli said. “Barron gave me the order to launch the coin…. He was adamant that Don Jr. was going to launch a coin.”

Shkreli said that Barron was also worried that Trump’s presidential campaign would launch its own token. “We kept this from the campaign. We don’t trust the campaign. We don’t like the campaign people — I viewed them and Barron viewed them as bloodsuckers, as political consultants who know nothing and are just trying to drain as much money as they can out of the situation.”

He said Barron pulled out of the deal after the publicity wave arrived.

There isn’t much anyone can do to verify a word of that, until and unless Barron Trump surfaces with his own version, if he even has a version and Shkreli hasn’t concocted the whole yarn.

Shkreli’s record doesn’t inspire confidence. Consider the convoluted history of the album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” by the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan. The musicians recorded the album with the intention of creating just a single copy that could be played only at listening parties but not commercially exploited until 2103.

At a 2015 auction Shkreli bought it for $2 million. After his conviction for fraud, it was among the $7.36 million in assets the federal government seized to satisfy judgments against Shkreli. The arts collective PleasrDAO bought it from the government for $4.75 million, only to discover, according to a lawsuit filed earlier this month, that Shkreli had copied the album and was streaming songs from it online.

PleasrDAO has obtained a temporary restraining order prohibiting Shkreli from streaming or issuing copies of the unique album, pending a hearing scheduled for next month.