In order to make anything, we need a script.
Audiences pay or tune in to see actors, but actors need something to say. Directors bring everything together, but directors can't direct a blank page.
The closest there's ever been to a movie made from a blank page is 'Last Year at Marienbad.' It's a French film (say no more). It does have words, just not in any coherent order. It does have a script yet no known human understands it.
The film is infamous for its enigmatic narrative structure, in which truth and fiction are difficult to distinguish, and the exact temporal and spatial relationship of the events is open to question. The surreal nature of the film has fascinated and baffled audiences and critics alike. Oddly enough, like a case of the Emperor's New Clothes, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1963. [An auspicious year?!]
Even that incomprehensible piece of garbage / masterpiece (delete at whim) had to have a script.
Writers are also needed for non-fiction TV shows, because without a script a non-fiction show would just be like watching people at a bus station. Mind-numbing. These shows are promoted as supposedly being "reality." If they were not scripted, no-one would watch them. Even the choice of participants in this false reality is scripted.
Many foolish individuals regard a script as merely a blueprint. That is dismissively cold and two-dimensional. Never mind that the person who designs a blueprint is the 'architect,' which would make the director only the 'project manager.'
The script is the creation of the film's world, bringing the characters into existence with themes and structure. It is a bible.
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