Wearing a full Hannah Montana outfit and carrying a microphone, Dia Reeves, 4, belts out a song while watching the Hannah Montana movie with her family at Tanglewood Mall on the movie's opening day.

Josh Meltzer | The Roanoke Times

Related

Movie times

• Get movie times and write your review

Video

• Watch video of Hannah Montana fans at the theater opening day

Related story

• Why Hannah is so hot

To look out at a typical, stadium-seated audience for the new 3-D Hannah Montana concert film is to see something along these lines:

Lots of small faces peering through identical, oversized, dark horn-rimmed glasses.

Lots of young mothers and young daughters.

And an inordinate number of ponytails.

The concert film starring Miley Cyrus, singer and star of the exceedingly popular Disney Channel series "Hannah Montana," opened Friday in Roanoke even as tickets to Cyrus' live shows continue to sell out and fetch big prices online.

The digitally projected 3-D movie, "Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert," is following suit: The Carmike 10 at Tanglewood Mall offered 16 separate screenings on Friday, and many of those sold out. As tickets have been on sale online since December, a number of the screenings today and Sunday have already sold out as well.

"We bought [tickets] online on Monday," said Kim Puckett of Roanoke, who saw the movie Friday with her daughters Ruth, 3, and Samantha, 8. Admission to the 74-minute film is $15 in advance or $18 at the door, but Puckett feels the price is right. "The concerts are running $45 or $50 each, and you can't even get tickets."

Randy Cooper brought his 13-year-old daughter, Cortney, to a Friday screening. They saw Cyrus in concert in Greensboro, N.C., in December.

Cooper said the movie is "definitely cheaper" than the live show and later joked, "But by the time we buy popcorn, it's probably even."

Adding to the mania is the fact that "Hannah Montana," also showing at the Salem Valley 8, is slated to be in town for just one week. It's being shown in digital 3-D, a more advanced form of the older celluloid 3-D that required blue- and red-lensed glasses; viewers Friday donned Wayfarer-style shades with dark lenses instead.

Digital 3-D gives greater perspective and depth of field to its images and allows, for example, Cyrus' guitarist to fling his pick directly into the camera.

In two weeks, the Carmike theaters will host another three-dimensional performance film, but one aimed at a slightly older but no less enthusiastic demographic of music fans. It's called "U2 3D."