I could also see a Cowboy Bebop live-action movie being good, but that has more to do with the fact that the anime itself was already more Westernized by the soundtrack and dress sense. Also because of Earth's partial destruction, it gave the writers creative freedom to not have to include some kind of nationalistic undertones.
Akira, conversely, is all about Japanese undertones that just can't be understood by a Western audience the same way. The nuking of Tokyo at the beginning immediately sets the tone and the context for the rest of the film. While bits and pieces of the film are not exclusive to Japanese ideals, like the bōsōzoku, or idea of a police state, Katsuhiro Otomo wrote Akira from an exclusively Japanese perspective, and in a Westernized version of that, it will change too much to so that the only thing remaining is this hollowed version of what was once a deeply metaphoric and important piece of a nation's culture.
In terms of just making it into a movie, it wouldn't be easy but I think it's do-able, although the sheer destructiveness of Tetsuo in the film's climax would be hard to do properly, although the new film Chronicle apparently does take a lot of inspiration from Akira so that's something to look to for inspiration.
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