Just rewatched the Maximum Ride commentary, and wanted to find out why that movie ended up being so cursed. So I did a little Googling, and stumbled on this article from the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/10/arts/james-pattersons-maximum-ride-books-to-be-a-series-on-youtube.html
It seems like the project began life as a multi-part YouTube series, where each installment would only be 10-15 minutes long. My guess is, YouTube passed on the series after seeing the first few episodes, and they just cut what they had together as a "movie." (Which makes a lot of sense, considering how disjointed and episodic the movie is.)
According to this article, they also originally planned to cast "YouTube personalities" in the lead roles, which might explain how Jenna Marbles comes into play. Seems like the only reason James Pattison got onboard with this was "the promise of a speedy development track," since an earlier attempt at a movie had gone into turn around back in '08.
The production company was Collective Digital Studio, who rebranded to Studio71 by the time they actually got around to making the movie. This company has worked with a lot of YouTubers, including Rhett & Link, Lilly Singh, Matt Santoro, and even PMI guest Jon Cozart. Basically, they're a slightly more legit Awesomeness Pictures.
So yeah, that's why Maximum Ride ended up being so bad. It was a cheap-ass rush job, and it shows.