After updating android studio to 3.0 and switching to gradle plugin 3.0.0 I am getting this error:
gradle plugin 3.0.0
Gradle \'...\' project refresh failed Err
Pls. see this official tutorial on gradle migration to 3.0.
Had similar issue - the reason was that in manifest was written meta_data instead of meta-data. For older gradle it was just warning, for new - fatal error.
meta_data
meta-data
Maybe you have something similar.